Sciamma layers the intrigue straight away. We learn in the opening minutes that the daughter, Héloïse,thwarted an earlier attempt to put a version of her on canvas. Marianne must pretend to be simply a walking companion. Then, from memory and stolen moments of furtive pencil sketching, she’s to create the portrait in private, when alone in her elegant, fire-lit room. The film is full of paradoxical images, as when Marianne sits naked, smoking a pipe, before a crackling fireplace while her water-logged canvases dry out. Here, and throughout much of Sciamma’s elegant narrative, she’s both the posed subject and the contemplative artist.