Whether that's good or less good or useful, others can sort out - that's outside the realm of criticism.īut make no mistake, "Blue Is the Warmest Color" constitutes a breakthrough, in addition to being the best film of 2013.First Kechiche throws the viewer into the world of Adèle (Adèle Exarchopolous), a wide-eyed high-school beauty who should, by the standards of her classmates, be wowing the boys, but instead almost breaks the heart of the one fellow she experimentally dates. Rather, it is very much a film about young love that just happens to be about two women, and any man or woman will know what that means and what that feels like and will connect with Adele's experience. Their intimacy is not only something they've been through - we've gone through it with them - and in the end, it's the nakedness and abandon of the emotions, not the sex, that stays with us days later.įinally, though "Blue Is the Warmest Color" is a film about lesbian lovers, nothing in Kechiche's treatment of the subject suggests the Other. Certainly, the memory of the intimacy informs how we watch the rest of the film, lending it an extra depth of feeling that might not have been there.
This is quite possibly true, and yet a great film is a delicate alchemy, and I would not tamper with it. Some might argue that Kechiche depicts too much of the sex. The attraction is intense, and the bedroom scenes show where it all leads. But Kechiche shows us Adele's soul, so that we know she's extraordinary, too, if only in her ability to feel and to give of herself. Seydoux conveys the mind of an artist, and in all the ways the world measures it, Emma is the more extraordinary person. Emma (Seydoux) is an art student, from an artsy upper-middle-class family, while Adele is lower-middle-class - class will become an issue as the film wears on. When Adele first sees Emma, who is about five or six years older and has blue hair, it's love at first sight, and it registers on Exarchopoulos' face in the way it does in real life - like a kick in the stomach, like a forced recognition of one's own incompleteness. Without doubt, this is Western cinema's most mature and assured performance by a teenage actress since Sandrine Bonnaire's award-winning work in "A Nos Amours" and "Vagabond" 30 years ago. When the character grows into her mid-20s, Exarchopoulos (18 at the time of filming) evokes the aura and sensibility of a responsible adult woman. When the character is a teenager, Exarchopoulos thinks teenage thoughts. In close-up, we see an actress whose thoughts and moods are always shifting and revealing themselves, who is interesting in every frame. Though Seydoux, a major star in France, gets top billing, it's Exarchopoulos, previously unknown, who is the movie's focus. In group scenes, director Abdellatif Kechiche just leaves the camera on Exarchopoulos. We meet Adele (Exarchopoulos) in high school, and unlike the usual bland teenage protagonist, she is already vivid - lively and confident, with a touch of insolence, an arresting low voice and an epicurean response to food. From the beginning, it settles into a rhythm that makes sense of its length and gives the viewer a deep sense of place. The film is 179 minutes long and needs all 179 minutes. When it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, Steven Spielberg, hardly a radical, was president of the jury. I doubt anyone walks out of "Blue Is the Warmest Color" feeling they've seen a sex movie. But unlike in a film of pornography, the sex is simulated (as in no actual genital contact), and the overall point is not to arouse. On the contrary, if you don't find these scenes erotic, you've probably been dead for at least a week. The scenes, which are explicit and protracted, earned the film an NC-17 rating, and it would be disingenuous to claim they're not erotic. It arrives from France on a wave of controversy for its depictions of lesbian sex between the two young women, played by Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos.
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