Imagining a romantic destiny The place of the painted portrait in N’oublie pas que tu vas mourir by Xavier Beauvois (1995)

In N'oublie pas que tu vas mourir (1995), painting is the theoretical domain of the main character, an art history student. Knowing that he is seriously ill, he turns away from his ambitions to live an extreme adventure, on the verge of his announced death. From then on, the painted portrait will go from being an object of study to a figurative motif of a romantic destiny. This text analyzes the stages of conversion, on both a narrative and aesthetic level.