Céline Sciamma's sumptuously beautiful Cannes prize-winner is one of cinema's most compelling visions of the power of desire. Set in late 18th century France, painter Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is commissioned by an affluent countess to paint the wedding portrait of her sheltered daughter Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) so she can be appraised by a suitor across the sea.

Completing the portrait in secret, observing the resistant Héloïse by day and painting her by night, the two women grow closer. Their intimacy and attraction begins to blossom into a profoundly charged romance.

Seductive, devastating and irresistibly beautiful, this period piece with a distinctly modern feminist sensibility sees Sciamma (Tomboy, Girlhood) take her place as one of her generation's finest filmmakers.