Fresh off its Palme D’or win at Cannes Film Festival, Blue is the Warmest Color has made its way to Arizona and I’m pretty underwhelmed by all the controversy it has caused.
The 3-Hour NC-17 rated lesbian romance-drama that caused a heated internal feud between the two lead actress and the filmmaker, is now showing at Camelview and most people don’t know or give a shit. Perhaps it’s the three hour run time that is keeping people away, or the fact that three of those hours are filled with subtitles and that damn Frenchy talk. I doubt it’s because of the graphic sex scenes.
While it’s nice to not see the Westboro Baptist Church protesting outside one of my favorite Scottsdale institutions, it saddens me that more people aren’t experiencing this incredibly well-made modern masterpiece of cinema.
Based on the graphic novel (yes, a graphic novel) entitled Blue Angel by Julie Maroh, Blue is the Warmest Color follows roughly ten years in the life of spiritually lost adolescent Adele (Adele Exarchopoulous) and her exploits with romance.
When we first meet Adele she is fifteen years old and in high school. Her “friends” at school tease her about sex and put pressure on her to lose her virginity. She has a brief fling with a musician classmate named Thomas (Jeremie Laheurte) before realizing she digs the ladies.
Enter Emma (Lea Seydoux), a wild-at-heart Fine Arts college student, Adele meets one night when she “accidentally” wanders into a lesbian bar. Romance blooms, and the two gradually become an item.
When Adele’s “friends” at school find out, anger and hateful homophobic behavior you’d expect from American schools ensues and Adele is forced to keep her relationship a secret, especially from her conservative middle class parents. Over the course of their relationship, Emma acts as a sexual and spiritual guide to Adele, teaching her about life and of course how to be an adult lover.
Like many independent films and more so foreign independent films, Blue is the Warmest Color is propelled primarily by dialogue. This is a dangerous thing, especially with a three hour runtime, but writer/director Abdellatif Kechiche’s screenplay is absolutely phenomenal.
Every conversation is so painfully realistic and engaging, filled with moments we all have experienced in some point of our lives. The way these characters talk and even the seemingly meaningless topics they gab about, do wonders to strengthen their characters and justify their actions later in the film. It’s also layered with a lot of great symbolism.
Adele is an English major so she’s portrayed as being very logical and soft-spoken, while Emma is a Fine Arts major so she’s portrayed as being very unreserved and a bit impetuous. This is a very simple metaphor, but it does wonders to cement their characters.
They also represent the two central characters’ social backgrounds by what their parents eat at dinner. Adele’s parents, the stuffy conservatives, eat pasta with red sauce every night (or at least every night out of the several nights the story visits them.) Warm, mushy and depressing, nuked to perfection in a goddamn crock pot, this “Italian” sludge sloppily piles into the family’s mouths while they zone out to an awful game show blaring on the kitchen tv set.
On the other hand, Emma’s parents dinner feasts are filled with white wine and fresh seafood, oysters in particular, a rare treat that is known as nature’s aphrodisiac. This represents not only the higher social class in which Emma’s parent’s are a part of, but also how much more liberal and adventurous they are. They happily accept Emma’s life as a gay woman.
Towards the beginning of the movie, Adele hates shellfish but Emma gets her to eat it, and eventually she begins to like it. This represents her initial weariness about a lesbian relationship, but learning to love it because of Emma. It’s hilarious this movie compared eating shellfish to eating pussy, but it’s one of the many jokes of the film.
One of things I really respect about Blue is the Warmest Color is its ability to make these raunchy jokes about sex, without ever seeming like it’s trying to make an awkward and honest conversation about love feel less awkward by incorporating a shitty joke. This is not your grandfather’s stuffy French art film where no laughter is allowed.
Blue is the Warmest Color isn’t afraid to be funny and coarse, because life is funny and coarse. Love and sex are very serious things, but they can also be very funny things as well.
From a directing and cinematography stand-point, the film is absolutely flawless. Shooting over 800 hours of footage (that’s Kubrick territory), filmmaker Kechiche is able to capture every single second perfectly. Most of his scenes involve uncomfortable close-ups, but they never seem voyeuristic or creepy. There are virtually no wide shots in the entire film, so you have to focus intently on these characters.
The director uses blue a lot as a metaphor for lesbianism. When Adele enters a gay bar, the place is completely decked out in blue. When Adele breaks up with Thomas (before becoming a lesbian), the bench they do it on is blue. The girl who Adele is crushing on at school (before she meets Emma) is wearing all blue.
When she tries to make a second move on this girl and gets rejected, Adele is wearing a red sweater. Walking away from a failed romantic encounter, the hallway behind her is lined with red. When she steps out of the gay bar in a later scene, the scene is taken over by a red flame (from a bon fire) on the street. Red is the color used to contrast the happy blue with sadness or negativity. Not to mention, Adele’s main object of affection, Emma, has blue hair when we first meet her. These visual motifs may go unnoticed by the average viewer, but whether or not you see them they help re-enforce themes subconsciously in the audience.
Enough cannot be said about the acting from the two leads. These are the performances of the year, hands down. So real, so raw, so detailed in the pain of everyday life, Exarchopoulous and Seydoux don’t just play these characters, they are these characters.
Never for a moment do you feel that you are watching two actresses, you feel like you are watching two real people. You fall head over heels for these characters, and by the end of the movie it’s almost depressing you can’t spend more time with them.
A lot has been said about the graphic sexual encounters in the film, which earned it the once dreaded but now surprisingly chic NC-17 rating. The sex is extremely explicit, with a seven minute sexual encounter that shows you just about everything. It might be the single hottest sex scene ever put on film, and I’m not ashamed to say it turned me on almost as much as it was turning them on.
Sex is sexy, and to admit this scene wasn’t sexy is to admit you have cold blood flowing through your veins. While it is incredibly sexy and intense, it is in no way pornography because of the emotional element at play.
Porn presents to you two people that don’t give a fuck about each other, slamming their meat together in awkward but camera-friendly angles. These women love each other, and that care radiates through the scene preventing it from being smut. This is an intense, three-hour long love story that shows you all the elements both good and bad of a relationship, and sex is a major part of that. It isn’t gratuitous at all. It’s essential.
Blue is the Warmest Color is one of the best films of the year, hands down. It deserves a bevy of Oscar nominations, but I wouldn’t hold your breath for the old white hairs of the Academy to even acknowledge it. This is radical filmmaking, a true breakthrough in the industry.
The last couple of years have brought us some of the best and bravest independent films throughout the world including Holy Motors, Shame, We Need to Talk About Kevin and Dogtooth. I am so ecstatically happy to be participating as an audience member during this new height in independent film.
Blue is the Warmest Color might just be the best of them though, an unflinching and uncompromising master stroke from a mad meticulous genius who is willing to shoot over 800 hours of footage, just to get that perfect shot. There is no excuse to not see this movie.
Grade: A
