Blue Is the Warmest Color

It’s very rare to see a festival flick so relatable, with artistic choices that fully support the power of the message and the emotional effect. The three-hour series of details on the faces of actors, whose ordinary activities deliberately don’t deviate from the process of the heroine’s development, may have some passages that are almost unnecessarily long, but the creator would be able to justify them without hesitation. We are not only watching Adele, we are Adele and we are experiencing with her tense moments as participatorily as the film medium will allow. The sex scenes are perhaps too long, but also inevitable, given the consistency of the process of following the internal and sexual development of a fragile heroine, and they are also pleasant for the male viewer (both actresses not only act great but look great, too). Sexuality can be a heavy burden and here we see it unadorned and very realistic. 85% (09/20/2020)

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. (11/22/2013)

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. (06/26/2013)

I’ll be honest, I was afraid of this. My subjective viewer experience was terrified of a three-hour long French lesbian art film, and I believed that not even the fact that it will probably be a very good three-hour long French lesbian art film would help. But the fears were unwarranted, the film gripped me from the beginning and didn’t let me go until the end. Fantastic performances, incredibly firm direction; a thrilling experience. I wouldn’t cut a single minute of it, every scene in Blue is the Warmest Colour makes sense. (12/16/2013)

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. (04/10/2015)