Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) - Abdellatif Kechiche
I’m sorry for not calling it La Vie d’Adèle, I went through my blog and I’ve only ever used the English titles for films so I need that consistency in my life.
A French coming of age film about two women who fall in love... that unanimously won the Palme d’Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival... how has it taken me this long to see it?
Um... I’ll tell you why, it’s 2 hours and 59 minutes.
Yeah... my reaction exactly.
But you can’t pass up a film that contains scenes which Variety calls, “the most explosively graphic lesbian sex scenes in recent memory.”
Blue Is the Warmest Color is a massive undertaking that charts the long and passionate relationship between its two main characters, Adèle and Emma. When the film begins, Adèle is a closeted 15-year-old high school student and Emma is an openly gay art student. They have a love at first sight moment!
Across years of intense sex, heated fights, and professional success, the film vividly explores the realities of falling in love while coming of age. Based on the graphic novel, Le bleu est une couleur chaude, by Julie Maroh, the relationship in the film is probably more toned down than the destructive and even fatal love of the graphic novel. But its scope and closeness to its characters is supremely impressive.
Watching Adèle come to understand her sexuality in a seemingly conservative high school is powerful, as she tries failingly to hide this information from her classmates.
After a failed relationship with a male classmate, Adèle is kissed by a girl in her class who then rejects Adèle’s romantic advances. It’s sad and quick, but inside Adèle a spark is ignited. She decides to go to a gay club one night, where she sees the blue haired girl, Emma, once again.
They become friends, and love soon follows. They discuss art and philosophy, Adèle expressing her passion for reading while Emma wants to become a painter.
Crazy, Olympian-type sex comes next. Despite all the warnings, I was not ready for the intensity or duration of the sex scenes. Many critics (as well as trusted friends of mine) hinted at the “male gaze” aspect of the sex scenes, which are elaborately choreographed and include close-up shots I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. There’s definitely an element of male fantasy that many viewers picked up on.
The duration may be a little bit more realistic than the average 1 or 2 minute sex scene we’re used to, but I’m not sure if that means it is justified in a 179 minute film. But maybe the goal was to purposefully discomfort me with the intensity, knowing how destructive and heartbreaking this level of passion would end up being for them? I just don’t know if I trust any lesbian sex scene written, filmed, and edited by straight men.
As years go by, Adèle and Emma move in together and live a happy life as a couple. But Emma’s success as a painter distances the two, with Adèle working as a teacher and regularly being questioned about whether she is “fulfilled.” The theme of social class is important in the film, as Emma comes from an upper middle class background where her parents welcome Adèle as Emma’s girlfriend, discussing art and culture and even making a point to question her decision to become a teacher.
The scene with Adèle’s middle class parents is markedly different, where Adèle’s father points out that Emma should have a more stable career than a painter, and both of them believing Emma is just Adèle’s philosophy tutor rather than her serious girlfriend.
Food is an important motif as well, pasta being Adèle’s food of choice until one scene where Emma teaches her how to eat oysters. Kechiche notes that these are both indicative of class as well as suggestive sexual metaphors.
Obviously blue plays an important role in the film, symbolizing both Adèle’s curiosity for something different as well as the sadness of the outcome. Picasso, the second most famous artist to have a Blue Period (Lilo Pelekai), is regularly referenced.
But despite the run time, despite the crazy sex, I found Blue Is the Warmest Color to be a beautiful film about love, heartbreak, and growth. From the minutiae of daily life of two women in love to the chaos of having it all come crashing down, everything is presented seemingly without pretext, giving the audience a chance to form their own opinions. I personally loved the ambiguity of the ending, as almost a mirror for the ambiguity of our own futures. We can’t predict where Adèle will go from here because not even she knows.
Adèle Exarchopoulos plays Adèle with the sincerity of a woman who truly grew as much as Adèle did in the film, and the rawness of her performance gives validity to the passion as well as the pain her character experiences.
In an unprecedented move for the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d’Or was awarded to not only the director, but also the two actresses, for their work on the film. This is definitely well-deserved in my opinion, as serious controversy emerged about the way they were treated during production. Both Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux have stated that while they like the film, they would never work with Kechiche again.
Blue Is the Warmest Color isn’t perfect, but the flaws are jumbled in the complexity of the subject matter. I support any film that tries to portray these kinds of stories with this level of authenticity.
