La Belle Noiseuse

Adapted from a Balzac short story, this examines the many tensions that arise between a long-idle painter (Piccoli), his wife (Birkin), and another artist’s lover (Béart) who inspires him to pick up his brushes again and revisit an abandoned canvas. Meticulously depicting the painstaking, mostly wordless sessions between the artist and his naked model, the film nevertheless becomes an engrossing battle of (self-doubting) wills.