Review: Blue is the Warmest Colour

Teen Adele (played by then 18 year-old Adele Exarchopoulos) attends a gay bar with a male friend and meets blue-haired college student Emma (Lea Seydoux, ten years her co-star’s senior), and there’s an immediate attraction. Before long, the older and more experienced Emma is leading Adele into her first lesbian experience. They form a tight, passionate bond, though as with many relationships, there are setbacks, conflicts, and confusion throughout the duration of their relationship.

 

I’ve been wanting to see this 2013 lesbian romance/drama from director/co-writer Abdellatif Kechiche (“Black Venus”) for quite a while now, because I’m a pervert. Turns out that it’s a solid movie, while the sexual content actually has its plusses and minuses. Co-scripted by Ghalya Lacroix from a 2010 graphic novel by Julie Maroh (I need to start reading these graphic novel things), it’s not the masterpiece I was expecting from its reputation, and I think three hours is far too long for what is a pretty simple romance/relationship story to be honest. However, the two lead performances by Lea Seydoux and especially the remarkable Adele Exarchopoulos really give the film a lift. I don’t think blue hair is very fetching on the otherwise lovely Seydoux, but Exarchopolous is absolutely stunningly beautiful. More importantly, her performance is so outstanding that I think she was robbed of an Oscar nomination. I’d place her performance as the third best lead female performance of 2013 behind only Sandra Bullock in “Gravity” and Oscar-winning Cate Blanchett in “Blue Jasmine”. She’s that good. Her handle on facial expressions is masterful from the first scene to the last. It’s actually one of the best female coming-of-age performances I’ve ever seen, possibly the best. The chemistry between the two actresses (which seems to have translated off-screen too, though to what degree is hard to discern from confusingly different reports) is there and powerful from their very first conversation. I also need to point out that both actresses have amazing lips. That’s very important to note.

 

I was worried that the film would go down a very dangerous path and have one of the two girls decide she was straight after all and become a film about infidelity and confused sexuality. That’s a frankly tired cliché and not a helpful one either, so thankfully the situation here is more complex than that. In fact, the ending we finally arrive at is probably the correct one to be honest for these specific characters. However, it can’t be denied that the basics have been done before, even as recently as “Eloise” (both have teenage lesbian romances involving an art student), though this is the much better film.

 

I just don’t think it’s nearly enough material to stretch to three hours without an awful lot of filler and extended scenes. Do we really need to see elongated scenes of people eating spaghetti or making uninteresting small talk for ten unbroken minutes? The lead actresses let you know everything necessary with their facial expressions in less than two minutes. It’s too much movie, and possibly too much of a good thing in the case of the sex. In some ways, the big sex scene (which runs for almost the same time as the spaghetti-eating and tedious small-talk but much more pleasurable to watch) between the two actresses is the greatest sex scene of all-time. Yes, even better than anything in films like “Bound” or “Emmanuelle II”. However, it seemed to me to be far too spectacular and ‘creative’ given one of its participants is a high-school girl having her first sexual experience with another woman. On that level, it was quite unbelievable, though hardly the biggest issue in the world (It ‘works’ great if taken out of context. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge- Hey, it’s that kind of film OK?). The actresses certainly help a lot, and both have incredibly sexy bodies, Seydoux especially, and they tackle the scene like Romeo and Juliet in their intensity and passion for one another (Though I don’t seem to recall Romeo and Juliet ever 69ing in any version I’ve seen).

 

Overrated, overlong, and full of filler, but when this film is good…it’s great. It’s just a shame that the entire film isn’t great. Finding a different roadblock in the relationship than the tired convention of infidelity would’ve certainly helped, but there’s still a lot to like here.

 

Rating: B-