Palme d'Or winner at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival but Oscar-snubbed. Highly controversial.
In the three-hour French lesbian romantic-drama Blue is the Warmest Color, 15-year-old Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulo) experiences love at first sight with a blue-haired tomboy one busy afternoon in a pedestrian crosswalk. This was the exact feeling that her literature teacher was describing the other day—a strong feeling that is confusing to her, but which she cannot deny.
After first engaging in a heterosexual relationship in an attempt to quell her homosexual desires, Adèle finally gives in to her powerful attraction to the blue-haired Fine Arts student, Emma (Léa Seydoux), and soon, both women begin a steamy relationship. While Adèle hides her sexual preference to family and friends, Emma is the opposite: open, confident, and relaxed.
Culture plays a large part in the women’s relationship. The cultural difference between the two kick-starts the disintegration of Adele and Emma’s love affair. The working-class Adèle feels left out by Emma’s bohemian circle, insecure with Emma's “artistic” and “cultured” crowd. Although Emma wishes Adele could have been a little creative (“Why don’t you write some stuff?”), she is fairly accepting of her. An incident of betrayal—caused by loneliness—resulted to an explosive confrontation between the two (the best scene in the movie), and we question Adèle: is it all about sex to her? Because of the cultural barrier, what exactly binds their relationship? But one thing that we’re sure of: Adèle’s sense of identity and happiness is solely dependent on Emma.
Based on Julie Maroh’s graphic novel, Blue centers on a homosexual relationship but depicts universal truths about relationships. The film is brilliantly acted, stunningly naturalistic, especially by the perpetually open-mouthed Exarchopoulo, who delivers an intensely emotional and powerful performance. The controversial graphic and explicit sex scenes, though, are unnecessarily excessive and pornographic in nature that the movie could very well do without.
There really is nothing extraordinary about the story; the heart of it is Adèle; her obsession, her confusion, and her tragedy, and the emotional vagaries executed exceptionally well by Tunisian-French director Abdellatif Kechiche. Sometimes the film feels exploitative of women with its highly unnecessary graphic sex scenes (which real-life lesbians ridiculed as “unrealistic” and "based on pure male fantasy”), and a little bit preachy with its subtle philosophical titbits (existence is self-serving; moral values are subjective).
Blue is not an important film to watch as there is no significant value to the intimate story. It's just a passionate lesbian love story. You can skip the movie and you've got nothing to lose. However, the movie is memorable for its masterful direction and cinematography, its impressively and deliciously raw, naturalistic style (as if the script and cameras do not exist)—all of which provide a powerfully potent emotional drama rarely seen in cinema these days.
3 out of 5 stars
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