Directed by:
Abdellatif KechicheCinematography:
Sofian El FaniCast:
Adèle Exarchopoulos, Léa Seydoux, Salim Kechiouche, Jeremie Laheurte, Catherine Salée, Aurélien Recoing, Benjamin Siksou, Alma Jodorowsky, Sandor Funtek (more)Plots(1)
15-year-old Adèle dreams of finding the love of her life. When she meets Thomas - a dark, handsome, friendly stranger who falls for her instantly - her dream seems to have come true. But an unsettling erotic reverie upsets the romance before it begins. Adèle imagines that the mysterious, blue-haired girl she encountered in the street slips into her bed and possesses her with an overwhelming voluptuous pleasure. She can no longer deny her true desires - Adèle likes girls. Then the gorgeous, sensual blue-haired girl reappears. and approaches her. A passionate and chaotic love story has begun... (Wild Bunch Distribution)
(more)Videos (3)
Reviews (10)
Though Blue Is the Warmest Colour owes some of its qualities to the original comic book (available in French and, since September 2013, in English) about two young women’s great love spanning several years, the main reasons that it is such an emotionally absorbing experience consist in the adaptation’s flawless formalistic approach. An essential role is played by the unique symbiosis of the immediate performances of the actresses and how they are captured by the camera, as most of the runtime is made up of close-ups and medium shots. This approach, literally eliciting a feeling of closeness, highlights even the smallest details in the faces of the central couple, based on which the narrative builds the intense emotional tension found in all of the scenes. Blue Is the Warmest Colour provides an intense, three-hour immersion into a single relationship without a single unnecessary second. Each moment of this dramaturgically perfectly composed film presents a complex and very intimate view into the emotional life of the protagonist Adele – from the initial difficult clarification of her orientation to the passionate love that later transforms into doubtfulness arousing uncertainty and devastatingly painful loss. Despite the caustic comments directed toward it, Blue Is the Warmest Colour deserves all of the acclaim and attention that it has received from both critics and viewers not because of its explicit sex scenes, but simply because it is a uniquely intense viewing experience that literally takes the audience on a journey through the turbulence of a long-term relationship. Even as it enthrals viewers and allows them to experience every intoxicating and devastating moment in the women’s relationship, it never does so in a superficial way. P.S.: Blue Is the Warmest Colour gave me the most intense viewing experience that I have had in many years.
()
Blue Is the Warmest Colour takes a complex approach to depicting several developmental phases in the life of a girl who is becoming a woman. Kechiche could have shown only cause, effect and consequence, but he is more interested in the process and the course of the transformation itself, as well as its duration. Length is one of the many tools that the director uses to break down the barrier between the movie 90 protagonist, Adele, and the viewer. ___ A good eighty percent of the dialogue (and thus of the whole film) is handled through close-ups of faces. The traditionally rendered dialogue scenes consistently reassure us that reality continues outside the frame of the picture. Conversely, we are given the impression of being enclosed in a small space that is more or less defined only by the actors’ bodies. Ignoring the surrounding environment intensifies our connection with the characters, whose intimate zone limits what we see and hear. The distancing of the camera from the character at the end of a dialogue scene then serves as a liberating means of stepping out of the inner universe of interpersonal relationships and into the outside world. Whether the characters’ communication, be it verbal or non-verbal (including sex), is conveyed using the shot/countershot technique or through panning, also plays a role. However random it may seem, the form is always under the director’s control, fully subordinated to the process of bringing the characters together and distancing them both physically and mentally. ___ In multiple senses, a line is crossed during the erotic scenes (love and sex, reality and pretence), each instance of which has its own justification (for example, the sharp contrast between a moment of extreme intimacy and the following scene of a family birthday party, which requires far more pretence). The explicitness of the erotic scenes raises legitimate suspicion of voyeurism on the part of a tyrannical director (whom both actresses have described as a genius, though they no longer want to work with him), while their unusual length is the most extreme expression of the film’s unwillingness to pretend anything in communicating with the viewer. It is no coincidence that Blue Is the Warmest Colour also addresses the limits of honesty of representation (whether in film or in other arts) in dialogue that never descends into café blather that would only serve to demonstrate the filmmaker’s intellectual prowess. References to films such as Pabst’s Pandora’s Box reasonably complement the main motifs of the narrative and concurrently help us to understand the characters outside of the relationship context. ___ I don’t know of many films that could go this deeply and with such physical urgency under the skin of the main character. In my case, the idea of “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” was manifested with extraordinary intensity. After three hours, I was glad to start living my own life again, but my connection with Adele definitely did not end with the closing credits. 85%
()
(less)
(more)
The problem isn’t in its (justified) enormous length, but it should have taken a break between chapters 1 and 2. A good few years too, to let Adele grow up, because it seems quite out of place when, in the second phase, the scarcely twenty-year-old girl plays a middle aged woman and all that was different from her teenage phase were the glasses. Another problem are the explicit sex scenes; how they were performed didn’t fit with the mood of the movie. More than anything else, it seems like Kechiche wanted to quench his thirst for slapping young meat on set. Paradoxically, the best bed scene was the dialog after the garden party. And not least is the problematic closing twenty minutes when it gradually fizzles out in a way quite unfair to the qualities of the rest of the movie. These difficulties still don’t outweigh the fact that there are still entire passages (enough to make a long feature movie) when the story of Adele and Emma’s relationship is unrivalled in authenticity, drawing the viewer through all of the good and bad emotions that are integral to any relationship. P.S.: If you are racking your brains about the role of the diary that there so much secret and important talk about, but then nothing (not even the MacGuffin), so I recommend finding out what work this is based on and what the narrative style the original is.
()
If this movie were about a teenage hetero couple, it’d be mundane and uninteresting. If it were about two gay boys, it’d be unwatchable for most viewers. But it’s about two lesbians and the Cannes jury, led by the king of Hollywood, awarded it the Golden Palm. Like Linklater’s three-hour- long Boyhood, the three-hour-long Blue is the Warmest Color slowly and not too dramatically talks about everyday life issues. But unlike Boyhood, it focuses on one particular stage in the main character’s life and goes so deep that the last part of her story moves the viewer to tears. Because we all know how that hurts, no matter what our sexual orientation is. The sex scenes are very open, but not self-serving. On the contrary, they are very important for the physical and emotional absorption of the story, which is its alpha and omega. The central duo of young actresses is incredible in every word, feeling and look.
()
From the very first moment, you can tell that this was directed by a creator who knew exactly how to handle every scene. If he wanted to portray desire, he did it perfectly, but equally so boredom, hesitation, inability to fit in with the group, the beauty and spontaneity of lovemaking, as well as the sweatiness and speed of sex. It’s three hours long, yet every scene is in its rightful place. You don't even want to believe it until you see it. And what's the best part? Abdellatif Kechiche simply depicted things (relationships) as they are, without embellishment, just being realistic, which sometimes means being harsh. It doesn't have to look nice, but why not capture reality as it sometimes is? Thanks to Adèle Exarchopoulos, you see how many dimensions human nature can have. We're not just good or bad; sometimes we're repulsive, sometimes devoted, sometimes naive, sometimes foolish, sometimes completely indifferent, and other times... different. One person can do it all. Abdellatif Kechiche convinces me, especially after Black Venus, that the audience can tolerate reality and it doesn't have to be exaggerated; sometimes it's enough to simply let the camera watch. Still, I can't help but feel the length is excessively long.
()