Runtime: 2 hours, 55 minutes
Rating: NC-17
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Quick Impressions:
If you don’t leave this movie craving spaghetti, then you are not human. (Okay, that might be hyperbole. Maybe.) Still in Blue is the Warmest Color, we spend almost three hours watching protagonist Adèle do two things—eat spaghetti and fall in love…and she’s not always in love.
(To be fair, she also teaches school, and she’s quite vibrant and engaging in these scenes.)
Besides obsessing over the sheer volume of spaghetti Bolognese consumed in this film—it’s hard not to want to refer to it as something described in an odd joke told at a party during the movie—I also could not seem to shake the rogue thought, “If Harvey Weinstein had produced this film in the U.S., he would somehow have convinced them to change the rating to PG-13!”
(In my opinion, more people should follow Weinstein’s example and challenge ratings, though this one definitely earns its NC-17. Any time filmmakers have to step in and announce to the public, “Don’t worry the actresses are wearing prosthetic genitals during the cunnilingus scenes,” the NC-17 doesn’t really require further explanation. (Though unless they’re also wearing prosthetic noses, this reassurance rings a little hollow.))
Both Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux give fantastic, Oscar-worthy performances. I sincerely hope at least one of them gets nominated. For the first time in the history of Cannes, the two lead actresses shared the Palme d’Or with the director. (You could argue that such a move says more about the jury (led by Steven Spielberg) than the film, but once you see the film, I dare you to argue that these two women don’t give fantastic performances.)
The Good:
This movie made me want to go to school in France. (It also inspired me to test how long I could get by there saying nothing more than, “Ça va.”)
Listening to the school lectures on French literature and philosophy entirely enchanted me. (That definition of tragedy that the teacher gives while explaining Antigone is just so…French. I’m definitely not complaining about the education I received here, but how fascinating it would be to hear familiar texts explained from the point of view of another culture! I mean, obviously, you can get that same effect just by hearing the points of view of different professors or (more broadly) readers, but you’re not going to dissuade me from wanting to study abroad in France (particularly if I can hook up with someone like Adèle there willing to bring me bowl after bowl of spaghetti Bolognese).
What’s great about all these little lessons, of course, is that they provide a guide for finding meaning in the movie. They not only work in the backs of our minds, but they’re also front and center in Adèle’s mind, and we’re experiencing the whole thing from her point of view. It’s a three hour slice of her life. Nothing said in the classroom is meant to be filler or throw-away dialogue. It all comes back again and again in the movie. Educators ought to love this movie because it validates the importance of their work. Adèle’s education entirely shapes the person she becomes (or, at any rate, she believes that it does).
As philosophy tutor, Emma certainly articulates her beliefs better than her pupil, but I’m inclined to think that Adèle’s take on the whole thing—“I don’t understand”—is much more honest and probably shows that she’s more suited to philosophy than she realizes.
The contrast between Adèle and Emma is quite pointed. One is natural, artless, passionate. The other is cultivated, sophisticated, intellectual. But contrast is really the wrong word because clearly the two are complements, and when the line between them blurs, aspects of one begin to transfer to the other.
When the movie is titled Blue is the Warmest Color, paying attention to the color blue seems like a no-brainer, and I found watching for it very rewarding. (I think the color red is also important.) This is a very intellectual, philosophical film. The women are sharing their life, but it’s a different experience for each of them because they frame and experience reality so very differently. For a while, their passion (their mutual need to give to and take from each other) obscures the extremely pronounced gulf that divides them. (They love each other, but they live in completely different worlds even when they’re together.) Thanks to careful filmmaking, the audience can see the rupture in their relationship coming from way over here in America, but it seems to take the two of them completely by surprise.
The sex scenes are getting the most publicity, but for me, they were some of the least interesting scenes in the film. (I’m serious. I’m not trying to sound like I’m up on some pedestal impervious to arousal. It’s just those scenes are not as captivating as some others. Honestly, I’m starting to think that’s deliberate—because intense passion is blinding but not self-sustaining. Other things in life may pull our focus away from passion. No matter how good things are when we’re together, we won’t often end up together if we’re headed in opposite directions to different ends.)
What I found truly captivating in this film (to my surprise) were all the scenes of eating. Not only did the spaghetti Bolognese Adèle is always eating look delicious (and I’m not crazy about spaghetti), but there was also something very radical about these scenes that got my attention.
How often do we see people eating and enjoying their food in movies? (I’m not talking about the exaggerated enjoyment of commercials.) I mean, people go out to eat or sit together around a family table in television and movies all the time. But something is usually missing from these scenes—the shots of them actually eating. The mastication. The full mouths. The spit. The lips. The little bits of food. At first, it looks weird up on the screen. Then of course the thought follows, Why does it seem so weird? Why are these shots so disorienting? Everybody on this planet eats food every single day. (Well sadly, that’s not actually true, but let’s say instead humans must eat to survive and do so routinely.)
Seriously in Hollywood movies, the only people who actually chew and enjoy their food are mob bosses and their families. Only exaggerated Italians eat on film. Well, maybe also people on a date having a comically awkward fiasco. (I’m sure there are other cases, but none springs to mind.)
Of course, if you haven’t seen the movie, this may sound like I’m saying salaciously, “So there’s this lesbian who likes to eat and eat and eat, and she’s always stuffing her mouth full of food.” Honestly, in most movies, if a female’s mouth is showcased, and she’s eating something, it’s always made expressly sexual, but something else (or at least something much more complicated) is going on here.
I’m sure Kechiche shows us all this eating in an effort not to draw undue attention to anything Adèle does. Eating is natural, it’s a part of life. Love is natural, it’s a part of life. Sex is natural, it’s a part of life. Pain is natural, it’s a part of life. For three hours, we watch a part of Adèle’s life. The eating is sensual, but only in the sense that she’s a sensuous, passionate, genuine person who takes genuine (though not inordinate) pleasure in eating.
This was so interesting to me. I would not have thought of developing a character, building a story by this method.
Best Scene:
I like the scene in the bar because I so identify with Adèle there. My resting face hovers somewhere between total vacancy, “please help me,” and lost puppy dog. (I don’t know how it can be between three things, and I’ll probably look like I’m pondering this fine point of grammar if you ever meet me while I’m wandering out in public somewhere.)
As an adolescent and a young woman, I always felt totally out of my depth in virtually every social situation. (I still do, but how can anyone notice this when I never go anywhere with other people? I’m very clever about hiding it now. When I step back to give my daughter space to socialize without interference on the playground, I always look down at my phone, so the other mothers obviously think I’m busy and neglectful. They won’t know I’m just avoiding them because I’m such a clever sophisticate now, you see.)
Anyway, this scene feels so real (and for me relatable) because Exarchopoulos is so convincing. And then Adèle’s first actual spoken interaction with Emma also feels so natural—and also like such a relief. The whole thing feels so authentic. (And I don’t mean that you would have to be a lesbian to relate to it. Anyone who has lived through adolescence should be able to tap into what’s going on here.)
The party scene is also fantastic but too important to dissect here.
Best Scene Visually:
Pay attention to the color blue. (That seems so obvious that I feel like I’m making some obnoxious comment in class. “Do you think that because it’s in the title, the color blue could be important to the movie?”)
But I really do like the transitional use of color. If you follow the color blue, it actually takes you somewhere. (It’s like doing a dot-to-dot during a psychotic break except—I have to think—less disturbing.)
Visually, my favorite scene is the ending, the very end. I wrote a very eloquent sentence about why I like it and what it means, but then I realized that spoils the ending.
Most Economical Use of Comedy:
The two meet-the-parents dinner party scenes are hilarious (I love Emma’s answer about her boyfriend) but also terribly revealing. We can see these girls come from very different places, and we begin to sense, too, that they’re probably heading in different directions.
(On a side note, why on earth are well meaning friends and relatives always trying to talk gifted people out of being teachers, telling them, “You could do so much more!”? That’s tantamount to saying, “I want my child’s intellect and character to be molded by a complete idiot.”)
Best Action Sequence:
The fight scene near the end is fantastic.
Another scene I like is the early sex scene with the high school boy. (Nobody’s talking about this, but we definitely get a clearer look at this guy’s penis than we do at Michael Fassbender’s in Shame, which just goes to show you that most “controversies” and talking points are completely ridiculous.)
I really identified with Adèle’s character throughout this painfully misguided relationship. (Her general obliviousness certainly reminds me of my own, and his promise to finish reading a book for once to please her is an offer actually made to me by this guy (with whom I had absolutely nothing in common) in high school who spent over a month trying to get me to go out with him for some reason and wanted to “show me everything.” He was fond of telling me the tragic story of the previous blue-eyed ingénue who caught his eye but couldn’t overcome her modesty to follow him into his truck. “I would have shown her everything, but I couldn’t wait forever, and she missed her chance.” (Spoiler alert: I missed my chance, too.)
I also think it’s fantastic how his romance is doomed by reasons beyond his understanding or control, a pattern that recurs later on (sort of, if you’re in to that kind of interpretation). Honestly, I felt so sorry for him.
The sex scene is also quite important because clearly she’s just going through the motions, not into it at all, and not sure why (at least not in a conscious way that she can clearly articulate).
The fight in the schoolyard is good, too.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Adèle Exarchopoulos):
I’m glad I finally saw this movie and wrote this review because all year long, I’ve been glancing at this actress’s name and thinking “Adèle Archaeopteryx.” (I spend too much time with a four-year-old who loves science.) I’m glad I didn’t wait any longer to learn how to spell this woman’s name because I have a feeling she’s got a brilliant future in film.
I hope so much that Exarchopoulos pulls off an Oscar nomination, but she probably won’t. (Come on, though, Oscar producers, you know you’ve got to want her on the red carpet. Convince the voters to do it.)
Exarchopoulos is fantastic in this movie. Last year, octogenarian French actress Emmanuelle Riva impressed at Cannes and earned an Oscar nomination for Amour. Exarchopoulos gives us the same kind of effortless realism at the opposite end of the lifespan. (Anne’s life is ending, whereas Adèle is only just becoming a woman.)
I think it’s a great compliment to the actress to say that despite repeated multi-minute sex scenes and several enchanting scenes of dialogue with co-star Léa Seydoux, the parts of this movie that really resonate and stick with you are the scenes of Adèle absentmindedly staring into space while she eats spaghetti.
With the wrong actress, a film like this would be a disaster. We are watching Adèle at almost every moment of her life for three hours. So Adèle has to be worth looking at, she has to hold our gaze, and she does.
I think her best scene is the garden party simply because there’s suddenly nothing for her to do for so long. She’s really out of our element, and so are we because she’s not doing any of the things we’re used to watching her doing.
Adèle is an unusual part because I would say that all of Exarchopoulos’s best and most captivating moments are nonverbal. And she isn’t doing anything strange or grotesque to ensure that we keep looking at her. She’s just standing there being a girl—for three hours. It takes an actress of some caliber (and natural talent) to pull that off. Most people can’t do it, not with any amount of dedicated rehearsal.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Léa Seydoux):
I can’t decide which actress gives the better performance. At times I want to give the edge to Léa Seydoux because what makes Exarchopoulos brilliant is that she seems to be revealing her actual self on camera.
(I’m not saying she’s exactly like the character, just that her performance seems more like the kind given by Greta Garbo (as just one example). It’s mostly about screen presence, a photographable face, an energy in the eyes, life force emanating from beneath the skin. Also I’ve heard that the protagonist’s name was changed from Clementine to Adèle during production because some of the footage used in the film is of the actress out of character, and people on the set kept calling her by her real name. Exarchopoulos is amazing on camera, but how can you be acting without being aware of it? Clearly part of that performance is being coaxed and perfected by the director. Still I’m not knocking Exarchopoulos. All Greta Garbo really had to do was show up, but how many people can show up and be Greta Garbo? (I’m also not saying that Garbo couldn’t do more than merely show up.))
Léa Seydoux also seems to be just standing there being herself. The thing is, I’ve seen Léa Seydoux before, and I know that she’s not just standing there being herself. Watch Midnight in Paris, and you’ll see what I mean. Seydoux totally and comfortably inhabits her character, too, but it’s a character she doesn’t play in real life. Not only does she deliver her lines well, but every mannerism, every nuance contributes to the overall impression Emma makes on Adèle and the audience. She seems very real, like somebody you could meet anywhere and may already know.
It is to Seydoux’s definite credit that in the early scenes of the film I found her so captivating and charming and intriguing, and then at the end of the film I wanted to kill her. (Okay, I’m given to hyperbole today.) Let me express that sentiment more articulately.
In the big fight scene near the end, Seydoux’s character made me so furious, so angry, so invested in what I was seeing. (Now part of the credit for this goes to her scene partner, and part of it goes to the director for making me care so much about Adèle. What’s really interesting here is that after the movie, my husband remarked that what Adèle had done must have been such a gutting betrayal, and ordinarily I would have taken his view of things and been more inclined to side with Emma. But Emma’s rage in that moment seems like such flagrant blame shifting, and yet she insists on believing in it instead of pausing to examine her own motives. Meanwhile, Adèle also makes me furious there. (Seriously, at home I would have been yelling at the screen, “You’re not the child anymore. You’re all grown up. Quit sniveling and taking the high road and grow up and be a bitch.” I mean, I can see the diplomatic advantage offered by apology, but once you see that your efforts have failed, why not hurl a few accusations of your own? It can’t hurt things any more, and it might actually help. Argue as equals, and shift the dynamic of your relationship (which is clearly not working anymore). There’s a funny thing about talking. It lets you and the other person hear what you’re thinking.
Now the fact that I could get so into this clearly speaks to how well the film is working. Seydoux is great in all her scenes, but this one is fantastically difficult because her character is in a delicate state of mind, and she has to convey a great deal. It requires great nuance and a lot of talent, and I think she nails it. (Plus Seydoux could be nominated in supporting, although that’s such a competitive category this year that it might not help her chances.)
The Negatives:
|The seeming rancor between the stars and the director has been haunting this film’s media coverage for months. (I say “seeming” because I think we all know controversy is what media outlets dish out best.) Apparently both stars complained about the director’s extreme methods and harsh, disrespectful treatment. Then Kechiche responded by saying melodramatically that maybe the film shouldn’t be released, after all. Recently Exarchopoulos has backed off a bit, clarifying many of her original statements, but I’ll be stunned if Seydoux and Kechiche choose to work together again.
What’s interesting about this whole hubbub, though, is that while (in this country at least) the media is really punching the idea that the sex scenes are exploitative, Seydoux and Exarchopoulos are complaining not about the level of physical intimacy or the total nudity. They say they felt drained by the torment of the prolonged, sustained emotional intensity that the director demanded (even created). Kechiche apparently wanted raw emotion and did whatever he could to elicit it. Filming these scenes was an intense, exhausting experience for the actresses, and the first long sex scene apparently took ten days to shoot. I can see why even the most professional performers might complain about something like that. I mean, I know Kechiche wants to create art that frankly shows the reality of the human experience, but considering that it only took God six days to create the entire world, ten days of cunnilingus does seem a bit excessive. (The ten minute sex scene is not entirely cunnilingus, of course. There’s actually a daunting amount of variety. That was just the best way to finish the sentence.)
The point is, Seydoux and Exarchopoulos hinted to the press not about sexual misconduct but mental cruelty. It seems ironic that scenes depicting such ecstasy should be achieved by means of torture. (I guess Tippi Hedron should be grateful Hitchcock just threw birds in her face.) Of course, Kechiche is not the first person to recognize and explore the fine line between agony and ecstasy.
After seeing the movie, I’d say it’s clear what Kechiche is attempting with the sex scenes. He’s basically filming Adèle as if he’s making a National Geographic special about the emerging human woman. Whatever she does, the camera is there, a silent witness. (I always remember with a smile a scene from a nature documentary featuring a camera crew sitting around drinking coffee and eating sandwiches while all around them, hungry lions languish. And then the narration comes in, “The lions are starving. Nothing can be done.”)
So the tone of the sex scenes is odd (and a little jarring). People likening them to pornography are surely missing the point (perhaps deliberately, perhaps not). The sex scenes don’t seem particularly pornographic. They seem much more realistic and intimate than something designed to provide an orgasm to a third party beyond the fourth wall. (The focus and energy is directed inward as the two are locked together. They’re not making ridiculous faces for the camera or conspicuously showcasing their tongues or anything like that.)
The thing is, these scenes also seem less real than life. Certainly the sex is frantic, but while the two are conveying a frenzied passion, they’re not necessarily conveying pleasure or a sense of intimacy. (I mean when your face is buried in another person’s butt crack, certainly you’re demonstrating physical intimacy for the audience, but as we watch we don’t feel the spark and intensity between the two the way we do when they’re chatting over drinks in the bar or a sketchbook in the park.)
The more I think about it, the more sure I am that Kechiche is going for this effect deliberately. The lessons in the beginning of the film prime us for how to receive what we see in the movie. Certainly Adèle is influenced (even consciously) by her teacher’s interpretation of the novel Marianne, and I’m positive it’s not an accident that we get a lecture on Antigone and all sorts of philosophy early on in the movie. Perhaps Adèle understands her relationship with Emma (just like her relationship with spaghetti Bolognese) as a force of nature, a part of her nature. She sees Emma as a piece of herself she is otherwise lacking. Her passion for Emma is just like her hunger for food. So it’s probably no accident that the sex scenes seem less like pornography or romance than they do a nature documentary. (I think that may explain the rather thorough cataloguing of positions. We don’t need such versatility, flexibility, and duration to convince us that they’re in love. On film a lingering glance or intimate gesture can convey sexual spark much better than a dramatization of the Kama Sutra.)
In the sex scenes, we’re getting more of a visual metaphor for what happens when two souls (with different world views, backgrounds, needs, life philosophies) collide. In the sketching scene, Emma even tells us that she applies Sartre’s thoughts about essence and existence to her life, consciously defining herself through her actions. Emma also defines herself through her art (inexorably tangled up in her life, both a source of and outlet for her passion). So it’s probably no accident that when Emma and Adèle are scissoring they look so much like the sculptures Emma introduces to Adèle in the museum.
I’m not surprised that these sex scenes have been a constant source of bafflement and discussion in this country.
For one thing, Americans are not used to watching movies like this. (The ones who are were probably the ones who were really into Sartre and French literature as adolescents, and I’m quite sure such people are in the minority, particularly of movie goers.) Even today right now after all this time has passed since 1620, we have a very strange, angsty relationship with sex in this country. In most American movies, sex is either hidden (because think of the children!) or presented in the most twisted, salacious, titillating, pandering manner possible. (Eating is treated the same way. Just watch any commercial for burgers or pizza, and it’s clear that you’re being offered lusty forbidden fruit in the manner most likely to elicit drooling.) But in this movie, eating is just eating, sex is just sex. (Yes, there’s pleasure taken in both, but neither is anything weird or twisted.)
Of course the other big reason the sex scenes are generating so much discussion in the media here is how else do you convince mainstream American audiences that they’d like to buy tickets to a three hour French film about a young woman coming of age? (They were wearing prosthetic vaginas! (That doesn’t even quite make sense, but I assume they don’t mean “vagina” in the strictest medical sense.) They weren’t really having sex, were they? Ten minutes of lesbian sex! The actresses were so young! The director was abusing them!) Winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes doesn’t guarantee your film a big audience stateside. An NC-17 for graphic lesbian sex scenes—and the suggestion that the director was abusing the actresses—is far more likely to sell tickets. (Or at least, the people generating all the controversy probably think so. I don’t mean the French actresses.)
(Clearly there’s a delicate balance to be struck here. Somebody wants to make sure we know that these are the most graphic lesbian sex scenes that we will ever see in our lifetime, but—but!—no actual sex is happening—because both actresses are actually straight!!!! They’re straight!!!! So when their skin and their tongues and their genitals touch—through the cover of a prosthesis!!!—and they spend like five minutes scissoring and grinding together, and then one has her face buried between the other’s butt cheeks, don’t worry no real sex is happening. All that is just pretend because the actresses are actually straight! So they can’t be having sex. They’re straight. And they’re so young! And that maniac director was abusing them! And they’re wearing prosthetic vaginas! Don’t forget about prosthetic vaginas because obviously when you have sex using any sort of latex barrier between your skin and the other person’s, you haven’t actually had sex, especially if you weren’t into it.)
Actually, the real controversy here—something you could dig into and write academic papers about—is not anything that happens in the movie. Consider the reception of the film if you’re actually looking for controversial, problematic stuff.
Of course, any underage kids sneaking into Blue is the Warmest Color hoping for lesbian porn will be terribly disappointed. For one thing, this isn’t pornography. For another thing, some of the older ones may turn 17 before the movie progresses to the point of the girl-on-girl action they’re waiting to see. This is a three hour movie, and the time doesn’t pass in the blink of an eye. In narrative terms, an identical story could be told in half the time simply by cutting out all the lingering scenes of Adèle walking, staring, eating, chewing, sleeping. That would completely destroy the effect the director is going for (and achieves), but if you’re thinking of going to see this movie just because it features graphic, prolonged scenes of lesbians having sex, please reconsider.
(Unless you’re a lesbian—that’s a huge caveat I must add. If you’re a lesbian, of course you should see Blue is the Warmest Color. It’s an excellent film, and how often do you get to see a Palme d’Or winner about a young woman discovering herself as she falls in love with another woman? We get to see coming-of-age stories about men all the time, and in romantic comedies, first love is a really common theme, but films that focus on first love between two women rarely have this kind of pedigree or exposure.)
One thing I really don’t understand, though, is a question that my husband posed after the movie. He put it pretty directly. I don’t think I can say it any better. “Why are we always looking at enormous butts?”
It’s a good question. My first answer, “I think maybe the director is just obsessed with butts,” is clearly wrong (or oversimplified).
My husband had the good sense to reject that out of hand. “That can’t be it,” he said, “because for the first half of the movie, we see butts constantly, but after that party scene, all the butts just dry up and disappear.”
He’s right. Clearly there’s something more going on.
From a pragmatic viewpoint, a very reasonable explanation springs to mind. Butts are nature’s privacy screens. If someone is, for example, performing anallingus (or cunnilingus from an odd angle), and someone else (say an audience) is watching this from the side, it is virtually impossible for the person watching to see exactly what the anal/cunnilinguist’s mouth is doing. Instead the audience sees the pleasing curve of her partner’s voluptuous bottom (ample enough to at least partially obscure the actual person-to-person contact). I mean, there’s only so much prosthetics can obscure. Did the actresses also wear false noses and tongue sheaths and plaster casts over their faces and sculpted reproductions of each of their butt holes? I highly doubt it. A well placed butt cheek can cover a multitude of sins. The actuality of penetration can also be made much more obscure this way. (Now I’m imagining someone who had been peeping through a keyhole in a Tudor bedroom saying nervously on the witness stand that he can’t say for sure because the lady’s rotund bottom obscured his view. I’ll bet you could find something like that in trial records if you looked.)
If I watch the film again, I’ll consider this question further. As of now, I find all of the emphasis on rear ends a bit distracting and less effective than the rest of the film, but I’m willing to bet that there’s something more going on here that I’m just not seeing.
In some ways, I’m surprised that this film doesn’t give us scenes of people going to the bathroom because we see everything else. (That’s not a bad joke. I’m serious. I mean, everyone eats and digests food. It’s part of nature. This movie gives us way more mastication than any other film I’ve ever seen. Aesthetically, of course, it’s much better not to show somebody sitting on the toilet, so I’m not complaining. But I kept wondering if some scene like that was on the horizon.)
Why this beautiful, realistic film about first love and coming of age is rated NC-17 when torture porn usually gets an R is frankly beyond me, but by the MPAA’s own weird standards, this film’s rating at least makes sense. And in fairness, the way film ratings work now, anything less than an NC-17 is an invitation for parents without babysitters to bring young children. Why is it legal to bring a five-year-old to The Hills Have Eyes but not to let him watch two women having sex? Good question, but I do think most parents would object to their young child seeing either.
The only other thing that really bothers me about Blue is the Warmest Color is that given Adèle’s passion for literature, it’s quite odd that she fails (or maybe refuses is a better word) to verbalize her thoughts in order to make sense of her feelings and communicate her needs to others. But then again, she’s obsessed with French literature (and her professors’ helpful, instructive, guiding interpretations of it), so maybe her role model is Emma Bovary.
Can Adèle be anything other than what she is? Does the fault lie in her stars or in herself that all she wants to do is make love and Bolognese and teach little children how to read? Maybe we’ll find out in future installments. (You should have seen my husband at the end of this movie. “The Life of Adéle—Chapters 1 and 2??????”)
(Now that I’m on the subject, the film is quite long. Seriously, it’s three hours long. Because the film works, I can’t truly call the length a negative, but during the credits, my husband jokingly whispered, “During that ocean scene, I kept thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if she suddenly got eaten by a shark?’” I replied, “Great minds think alike! After the diner, I couldn’t stop thinking that she would wander out into the street and get hit by a bus.” I think the actual ending of the film is rather perfect, however. Good thing they didn’t let us work on the screenplay!)
Overall:
I feel like I’ve given half my life to this movie now. Three hours in the theater, a million pages on the word processor. Blue is the Warmest Color is a magnificent film that will stick with you. The NC-17 may make it difficult to get much traction in the Oscar race, but it’s already won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Both stars are fantastic, and despite the controversy surrounding his methods, the director has made a beautiful, powerful film. Don’t be put off by the notoriously graphic sex scenes. (I mean, they are graphic, and one of them is ten minutes long. But that’s ten minutes of a three hour film! And they don’t entirely fail in terms of eroticism, either. I feel like I’ve been stressing what’s odd and off-putting about the love scenes, so I should mention that they are definitely erotic.)
Once you’re in the theater, you’ll see that this isn’t some titillating shock piece. It’s a beautiful philosophical meditation on the meaning of life, the nature of existence, and what gives life meaning. It’s also a very authentic and close look at the struggles of an adolescent discovering what it means to be a woman and herself. (Plus you get to see some truly adorable little French school children! Seriously, they are so cute!)