This review may contain spoilers.

“Do all lovers feel they're inventing something?”

Ok, this movie was a VERY slow burn but ultimately.. it's a masterpiece. It's so subtle yet so tense all throughout. I also loved the way art and music were used to represent emotions and feelings that weren't (always) explicitly stated. Aside from some pacing issues and maybe too little variety in the setting, this was fantastic. Oh and btw, someone PLEASE give Adèle Haenel an oscar for that performance at the end.

The story is definitely a love story that also reflects on art, freedom and the obvious connection between the two, but moreso than being a story about love or art, it's a story about observing. The entire time, Marianne's eyes look.. almost hungry, as if she has to pick out every single little detail on Heloise's face. This is why it is kinda hard to tell if Marianne really fell in love with her as a person, with the image of her she created in her head, or simply with the act of looking at her. On the other side, we will also never really know whether Heloise actually fell in love with her, or if she fell in love with the very strong way in which Marianne observed her as she posed. The movie forces us to attempt to distinguish the difference between art and love, if there is any. Just like the story told in the movie, Did Orpheus look at Eurydice because he was "madly in love and couldn't resist", or does he make the choice to choose the memory of her? Like Orpheus and Eurydice, was Marianne looking at Heloise as an artist or as her lover? Marianne was also wrong at the ending of the movie. Heloise definitely saw her. No, she did not see her physically - she saw her through the music in the form of a memory. Just moments before, Marianne also saw Heloise through the painting, once again though, as a memory.

The cinematography reinforces the point made above. It's filmed in such a way that it's almost as if we are looking at Heloise through Marianne. The audience usually looks at the art and interprets it. In this film, the art looks back at you and it forces you to establish a relationship with it, and that is exactly what love is.

9.5/10