Céline Sciamma’s film Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, 2019) tells its 18th-century story of love and loss in part by retelling an ancient story, the myth of the poet Orpheus and his beloved Eurydice, as related by the Roman poet Ovid in his epic Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE). The myth’s most iconic moment, when Orpheus turns around to look at Eurydice and therefore loses her to Hades, occupies a central position in the film’s plot and underlies its running theme of ‘looking at’ as ‘looking back.’ By changing certain aspects of the myth – replacing poetry or singing with painting, making both main characters women, and having them alternate between the two main mythic roles – Portrait does not so much update the anci...