Film. As Adéle turns 17 or 18 (the movie isn’t quite clear), the two young women begin a torrid lesbian affair. It is no more authentic or inauthentic than any sex scene, or washing-up scene, or checking-in-at-the-airport scene. In detailing the relationship between blue-collar Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), 15, and Emma (Léa Seydoux), an older, sophisticated art student, Blue Is the Warmest Color … Pre-publication book reviews and features keeping readers and industry influencers in the know since 1933. Blue is the Warmest Color is unique in its openness and honesty about same-sex relationships although we never really experience the outsider status in society and … As the two lovers go, inevitably, out of the state of white-hot attraction and voraciousness and into a domesticity that presents the typical, and typically ugly, problems that an acolyte/ingénue arrangement presents, Adèle seems to grow up before the viewer's eyes in a way that makes Emma's self-possessed confidence look kind of complacent. The explicit sex certainly grabs the attention, but Blue Is the Warmest Color offers the adult viewer a great deal more to ponder. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here. (There are echoes here, oddly enough, of Claude Chabrol's little-seen 1990 adaptation of Henry Miller's "Quiet Days In Clichy," starring Andrew McCarthy.). The cockeyed open-heartedness of Kechiche's conception yields a girl-meets-girl-and-so-on story of three hours. BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is an abhorrent French drama about a torrid lesbian affair between a young artist and a young teacher. Having a healthy "love" for the female form, one may sensibly argue, is not the same thing as leering at it. The cockeyed open-heartedness of Kechiche's conception yields a girl-meets-girl-and-so-on story of three hours. Blue Is the Warmest Color 2013 ★★★★½ Rewatched Nov 06 , 2016 LauraBirnbaum’s review published on Letterboxd: If you like this, also read The Fault in Our Stars or This One Summer. This drama was never supposed to celebrate the equality of their romantic good faith. If "Blue is the Warmest Color" is not a masterpiece, and I don't think it is, it's certainly a provocation, but not a puerile one. FILM REVIEW 'Blue is the Warmest Color' 3 ½ stars (out of 4) Cast: Adele Exarchopoulos, Lea Seydoux, Sandor Funtek, Salim Kechiouche. I highly recommend it to all readers especially teenagers on up. By Kristin M. Jones in the November-December 2013 Issue. The most explicit scene lasts nearly 7 minutes. Soon after that they're discovering each other's keys to sensual ecstasy, in the movie's already much-talked-about sex scenes. Feeling no spark with him, or any other guys, she fixates on a blue-haired older girl she sees on the streets of her provincial French town. When Emma meets Adèle's conservative folks, however, the food is humbler – spag bol – and Emma has to pretend to have a boyfriend. Julie Maroh, who wrote the original graphic novel, dismissed Kechiche's adaptation as a straight person's fantasy of gay love. At TIFF 2013, Matt reviews Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Color starring Adele Exarchopoulos. Neither gives off the slightest hint of working to achieve or inhabit an emotional effect. The notion that they can each go on to find a better or richer experience is illusory. And once Adèle really finds Emma (Léa Seydoux), in a lesbian bar, it's not long before the student and the soon-to-be artiste begin having intense, soul-searching conversations on a soon-to-be-iconic (for Adele) park bench. They aren't hours that fly by, either, nor are they meant to; Kechiche, who as it happens is here adapting a graphic novel by Julie Maroh, intends for his viewers to luxuriate and/or empathize in and on particular details. A good-looking boy who likes her is rewarded with a brief relationship, but he is merely John the Baptist to the imminent Christ: Emma, played by Séydoux, a twentysomething art student. Blue Is the Warmest Color, the Palme d’Or winning drama about Adèle and the woman she meets next, brims with honesty and affection for its subject. Big success in the film business often means opening a can of worms along with the champagne. Blue is the warmest color is a super strong drama about love and passion. Director: Abdellatif Kechiche. And once the hurting starts, the performances grow more wondrous and sad. Read Blue Is the Warmest Color reviews from parents on Common Sense Media. That night, the woman figures in an erotic dream, and her world is rocked. “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” which has now opened in the United States, is a sexual coming-of-age story about a French provincial voluptuary, Adèle (Ms. Exarchopoulos). Teens, though, are unlikely to have the patience to sit through three hours of extended literature- and philosophy-class discussions or the equally … When the love affair starts, Emma has blue hair; as it proceeds, the blue colour grows out. It was powerful and gripping in its honesty and fearlessness. MRQE Metric: See what the critics had to say and watch the trailer. To paraphrase Woody Allen, if it doesn't make the rest of your life look like a massive letdown then you're not doing it right. He frequently frames Exarchopoulos in particular so as to accentuate the post-adolescent ripeness of her beauty. Emma is always the senior, dominant partner: better educated, more worldly and higher up the social scale. Blue Is the Warmest Colour is the only mainstream film so far to treat a lesbian affair on equal terms with a heterosexual one. What a passionate film it is. Seydoux and Exarchopoulos have since said he was oppressive, intrusive, and even tyrannical in the demands he made, especially in the extended explicit sex scene, which took fully 10 days to shoot. The romantic spark between them is a lightning bolt. While there have been plenty of movie romances not unlike this, there's never been one told in such an ambitiously immersive way. Blue is the Warmest Color centers on a 15-year-old girl named Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) who is climbing to adulthood and dreams of experiencing her first love. The two women meet when Adéle is about to finish high school, and Emma has started college. As it happens, that's not the thing that starts to drive the lovers apart. Kechiche sketches this out by having Emma bring Adèle around for dinner with her mum and stepdad. In any event, this sort of thing is exactly what sets off the most stimulating kinds of post-moviegoing discussions. Director Abdellatif Kechiche gets amazing performances out of two young actresses and gives the viewer a lot to think about. As for Kechiche, his feelings about that last-minute requirement to share the Palme with his two actors can only be guessed at – and the same goes for their feelings about his feelings. Kechiche has a sense of rapture that extends to all the human senses; Adèle and Emma, in the first throes of romance, eat as much, and as ravenously, as they make love, and there's particular attention given to Emma teaching Adèle how to appreciate oysters. It was released too late in French theaters to be eligible for a 2014 foreign-language Oscar. Blue Is the Warmest Colour should, by all rights, be a bit of a struggle. You may have heard lots of things about this film, but the most important thing to know is that "Blue Is the Warmest Color" is a masterpiece, the first … But I think that the impact of the movie increases with a second viewing, and my own objections about the lovers' ferocious "confrontation" scene have been answered. As for the much discussed sex scene, I predicted earlier this year that some sophisticates would claim to find it "boring". Become a member to write your own review. It’s a French romance-drama weighing in at almost three hours and featuring more dialogue than you could shake a … The Times critic A. O. Scott reviews "Blue is the Warmest Color." Yet the point is surely that there is no guarantee that either Adèle or Emma will ever find anything as good ever again. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Author: Paige Cohen October 24, 2013. “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” Abdellatif Kechiche’s long, sprawling, boldly immersive coming-of-age drama, works just this sort of magic. “ Blue Is the Warmest Color,” which has now opened in the United States, is a sexual coming-of-age story about a French provincial voluptuary, Adèle (Ms. Exarchopoulos). As a heterosexual male myself I am of, well, several minds about this. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, this finely detailed, intimate epic sensitively renders the erotic abandon of youth. And it isn't as if Kechiche is Max Hardcore, for heaven's sake. First loves are always the same and always different. Review: Blue Is the Warmest Color. 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