The title of Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” implies that her subversively seductive film will focus on the subject of its eponymous painting — an 18th-century woman who refuses to pose, in defiance of the arranged marriage into which she’s being forced — when it’s just as much a portrait of the artist responsible. How fitting, when one considers that Sciamma, the writer-director of “Water Lilies,” has adoringly crafted this project for that film’s star, Adèle Haenel, who beguiles audiences here with all that’s hidden behind her mysterious Mona Lisa smile.

One of four female-made features to premiere in competition at this year’s Cannes film festival, “Portrait” dares to engage directly with the questions of representation and gender that seem to have flummoxed the film industry of late, broadening its focus to the subject of womanhood itself at a time documented almost exclusively by men.
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