When an artist falls in love with his maid after painting her portrait, scandal ensues as her role shifts from employee to live-in companion. With the art world at its center, the film provides a sustained in­vestigation of the production and circula­tion of images of women, an investigation that emerges as much through the film’s visual systems – its use of space, com­position, and sightlines – as through its narrative trajectory. “Fine feathers make fine birds”, the saying goes.