Blue is the warmest colour behind the scenes
Whatever their issues with Kechiche, these beautiful young women are also fearless, aggressive and absolutely riveting in their portrayals of the star-crossed lovers.Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren, Stanley Kubrick and Shelley Duvall, David O. Blue is the Warmest Color is near-perfection in its construction.īut no one deserves more kudos than Exarchopoulos and Seydoux. Equally adept is Kechiche's team of five editors, who include screenwriter Lacroix. Working with cinematographer Sofian El Fani, the camera moves in so close that the images do not just pay witness to events, they contain an electrical charge of emotion that startles the viewer. Kechiche's technical prowess helps in this process. Smart people are given credit and screen time. Individuals who make stupid comments - such as another schoolgirl who denounces Adele's emerging lesbianism - are marginalized as idiots.
Philosophy, politics, education, art history, the business of art, fidelity, the challenges of same-sex relationships: Everything is on the tongue. One of the astonishing things is how the youth in the film are allowed to plumb complex matters, unlike in most American movies. Kechiche and Ghalia Lacroix collaborated on the screenplay, transforming the comic book scenario into a film with dazzling depth and breadth. The story originated in a graphic novel by France's Julie Maroh. Blue is the Warmest Color is still a masterpiece. But it changes nothing of what you actually see on-screen. The bitterness leaves Kechiche's film slightly tarnished. The co-stars, Exarchopoulos and Seydoux, have spoken up against their director, the Tunisian-born, French-based Abdellatif Kechiche.
There is a behind-the-scenes controversy. Originally called La Vie d'Adele in France, the film plays in French with English subtitles. In the right frame of mind, however, viewers will be richly rewarded. This film demands a commitment and focus that few Hollywood love stories ever ask for. Some viewers may find the combination of running time and detailed conversation unbearable, especially because the story evolves so gradually. Love is won and lost, renewed and abused. They talk extensively within their circles of friends, following in the New Wave tradition of the late French filmmaker Eric Rohmer. There are long conversational scenes as Adele and Emma engage. Emma is a blue-haired, twentysomething artist who catches her eye on the streets of Lille. There are no barriers between the audience and the young lovers Adele (played by Adele Exarchopoulos) and Emma (Lea Seydoux, whom we saw in the most recent Mission: Impossible movie).Īdele begins as a willful, teenaged schoolgirl. The central characters are allowed to express themselves fully. Of course, it helps that Blue is the Warmest Color runs just a minute short of three hours. No matter the orientation of the protagonists, few love stories in cinema history have so thoroughly, so realistically and so beautifully catalogued the minutiae and essences of a romantic relationship. But that is just the obvious, the surface elements that have generated both interest in and controversy around this great French film about lesbian love.īeyond the extensive and explicit sex scenes that get some people so riled up, the film is a masterpiece about intimate human relationships. Blue is the Warmest Color is sexy, sensual and sensational.