#this is literally a love letter to Adèle

[ladyonfire28]

In the film commentary, while the last scene was happening, Céline was reading the script at the same time. So I translated the whole text.

(A HUGE thank you to @bereaving for making those GIFs and helping me out with the text. You’re amazing.)

Here is the translated script of that final Portrait of a Lady on Fire scene:

“I saw her one last time.”

THEATER. INTERIOR. NIGHT.

MARIANNE makes her way among the spectators on the balcony of an Italian-style theater. She sits down and watches the room fill up in the hubbub of voices amplified by the acoustics of the auditorium. She distinguishes a familiar silhouette which progresses in the opposite balcony. The face slips away and Marianne does not take her eyes off it until it turns. It’s HÉLOÏSE. She squeezes between the occupied armchairs and the empty armchairs until she reaches the end of the balcony like the edge of a precipice. She’s sitting there. There’s nothing between her and the stage. Her eyes are riveted on this horizon. She does not look at the room as the conversations go out one after the other as by mutual agreement.

"She didn't see me."

The theater suddenly fell silent before the stormy violins begin their first movement.

(Music begins)

Like a restrained breath torn by a well-known staccato, the one of the inaugural notes from Vivaldi's Summer presto. HÉLOÏSE displays a first disturbance in the face of the first bars of this long-awaited piece. You get imperceptibly close to her face during the 3 minutes of the movement.

This face experiences the dramatic deployment of music as it hears it, pierced by the generous rise of it. There is everything: there is surprise, elation, a beating heart, waiting, melancholy, concentration, the red which goes up to the cheeks, the memory, the sadness, and the breathing which becomes deeper.

All the attitudes of a woman that we knew well, and that we loved to look at. That we loved, period. But there are also things that we didn't know about her and that are being discovered. Maybe because they are new, like this wrinkle around the eye. Maybe they are things that we hadn't been able to see and that remained to be understood.

When the piece reaches its exalted final, HÉLOÏSE reveals the last and most alive of all her faces.”

"Adèle had only one instruction: to finish on an inhalation."

The audio

Click here to see more translated parts of the DVD commentary

[emcads]

Get to know the blogger!

Tagged by: no one  I’m tagging: yes 

FIRST NAME aleah ! 

STRANGE FACT ABOUT YOURSELF i walk on my toes when I’m nervous or in an unfamiliar situation. even when/especially if i’m wearing heels, the extra noise makes me more nervous lmao. 

TOP THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU FIND ATTRACTIVE ON A PERSON style ( particularly vintage style ngl ), nice brows, and red lips ?? women are beautiful always but wearing red lipstick i’m knocked the fuck out 

A FOOD YOU COULD EAT FOREVER AND NOT GET BORED OF the on-campus cafés would sometimes have a cappuccino muffin and it was so good i literally miss them so much. the coffee flavor wasn’t overwhelming and it had powdered sugar on top and ... yes. 

A FOOD YOU HATE cooked carrots. raw carrots are fine but cooked carrots are nasty. 

GUILTY PLEASURE i love reading threads about all the weird shit the kardashians do. i feel like a game of thrones peasant watching the nobles just act like absolute buffoons with money they don’t know what to do with.  

WHAT DO YOU SLEEP IN like a tee and joggers / shorts. sometimes if i really want to channel my vintage aura I have a long pink chiffon bed jacket and matching nightgown that I’ll wear but only on special occasions. 

SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS OR FLINGS neither i’m a lesbian so i just yearn and never actually make a move. am I flirting? even I don’t know. 

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN THE PAST AND CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOUR LIFE, WOULD YOU AND WHAT WOULD IT BE in 5th/6th grade I went through a phase where I convinced myself to be obsessed with boybands to fit in with my friendgroup at the time and to prove to myself I was straight. I said I would marry liam because he once tweeted that he liked pirates of the caribbean. ( admittedly, my standards were on track ) so yeah. just not do that. because i wasted so much of my time. 

ARE YOU AN AFFECTIONATE PERSON sort of? I don’t do well with out loud communication or touching, I’m much more able to express myself either through written form or sending gifts that remind me of the person / memes / etc etc. I feel like I can come off sort of cold in person but it’s just bc i’m literally So awkward. yes i am aware this makes me sound like mr. darcy. yes ladies feel free to send me a romantic letter. 

A MOVIE YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN saving mr banks. over and over and over again. i owe pam everything. 

FAVORITE BOOK it changes. i always come back to the price of freedom bc it’s my comfort book, but I also really like The Playmaker rn, and The Republic of Pirates is my fave non-fiction book ever. 

YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP ANY ANIMAL AS A PET, WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE a turtle. i wanted one so bad this semester !!!! 

TOP FIVE FICTIONAL SHIPS [IF YOU ARE AN RP BLOG, YOU CAN USE YOUR OWN SHIPS AS WELL] well obviously james/esme. steve/peggy. esme /elizabeth. peggy/angie. héloïse/marianne.

PIE OR CAKE i’m gonna say cake bc cheesecake but not really a fan of regular cake texture. 

FAVORITE SCENT rose. 

CELEBRITY CRUSH adèle haenel my god 

IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD YOU GO i’m yearning to visit disneyland paris.  

INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT introvert.

DO YOU SCARE EASILY oh totally 

IPHONE OR ANDROID iphone. i’m all about those aesthetics babey 

DO YOU PLAY ANY VIDEO GAMES yeah ! not as much since college but I love aciv for obvious reasons. i also regularly play the legend of pirates online which is the rebooted disney mmorpg. ( again, obvious ) i want to play sims again so bad but im not letting myself because i know that’s a slippery slope. 

DREAM JOB imagineer ! i know every disney person says that but like literally... my dream environment. your job is to be eccentric and awesome and have attention to detail and story and the overall goal is to make people happy and transport them to a better, safer world. ( also, depending on who’s head of the company, to make disney the monies but lbr the projects are never good when the goal is to make/save money @ dca ) i just think i would thrive there and i’m getting emotional just thinking about it so moving on 

WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A MILLION DOLLARS probably buy a house in france. give a bunch to make a wish. build a theatre in my hometown. 

FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU HATE literally everyone in smash season 2 but especially jimmy 

FANDOM THAT YOU WERE ONCE A PART OF BUT AREN’T ANY LONGER i guess the got/asoiaf fandom ? i still like it but i don’t really Go There anymore 

[ladyonfire28]

Love seeing your answers on my dash! I've nothing but praise 😊 Thank you for always sharing info about POALOF and the artists themselves. I was reading the translated interview of Adele about characters being alive even off-screen and that got me wondering, are there any discussion about Heloise's sister? Though she's a side character, she was the catalyst for the main leads' meeting. Care to share some of your headcanons about the sisters' relationship?

Tbh I don’t really think about her sister much. I don’t have a huge imagination so I like to stick with what I see aha. But Céline and Adèle never talked about her either. Céline always said she didn’t care about backstories and characters who weren’t on screen aha.

But from what I can imagine I guess since Héloise went to the convent, and probably at a quite young age, she probably didn’t spend a lot of time with her sister. I still believe they cared for each other a lot since her sister wrote her a letter and apologized to her. And she literally preferred killing herself than sacrificing her freedom so that tells a lot about her. She was either living a miserable life and that marriage was just too much and she felt desperate, or she really couldn’t feel like living without freedom because she cared too much about being independent. Either way that woman was fighting for her rights and freedom. And she probably also felt bad to see her little sister go to convent and even more to know that she’ll be the one to marry.

So yeah I think both are very determined, in different ways though. Héloïse seems more a fighter than her sister, since she refused to do the portrait etc. She seems more rebellious than her sister who seemed more pessimistic (hence the suicide).

Or maybe her sister also tried to fight as hard as she could but she still lost. And suicide was her last option because she didn’t want to live a miserable life. And maybe Héloïse would have done the same if she had not met Marianne. Maybe the memory of Marianne and her love for her werr the only things that made Héloïse’s life with living.

Anyway I don’t really have any real headcanon so that’s what you get aha.