“What if it was Eurydice who told him to turn around?” (“Et si c’était Eurydice qui lui avait demandé de se retourner?”).
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.’
Then striking the lyre to accompany his words, he sang, ‘Oh, Gods of the Underworld to which all mortals descend, I am here to seek my wife. A viper that she trod on poisoned her and robbed her of her youth. I beseech you, unravel the thread of Eurydice’s early demise. All will be yours. We all end up here. This is our finale abode. You reign over the human race. After living out her fair span of years, she will be yours. If the fates refuse my wife this favour, I am determined not to return. You may delight in both our deaths.‘
Then for the first time, tears wet the cheeks of the Eumenides, won over by his words. Neither the King’s bride, nor the ruler of Hades could resist his prayer. They sent for Eurydice. She was there, among the recent spirits, and approached, limping from her wound. She was returned to Orpheus on condition that he would not look back until outside or the favour would be void.
In deep silence they took a sloping path, steep and dark, shrouded in thick mist. They were nearing the surface, approaching the threshold, when fearing losing Eurydice and impatient to see her, her loving spouse turned and she was instantly drawn back. She reached out for his embrace and wished to hold him. Her poor hands clutched only the empty air. Dying a second time, she did not complain. His sole fault was loving her.
She spoke a last farewell that scarcely reached his ears and fell back into the abyss.
Maybe she was the one who said to him: Retourne-toi.