*Warning: this review contains discussion of sexuality*
Love stories are hard to translate to film. Most movies, weighing in at 2-3 hours, simply aren't long enough to show the complexities of meeting someone, falling in love, fighting, possibly falling out of love, etc. There's a reason why so many love stories on screen are reduced to cliches and well-lit PG-13 sex scenes: it's damn hard to make characters' relationships feel real in such a short amount of time.
In Blue is the Warmest Color, director Abdellatif Kechiche (that's a mouthful) manages to capture, for the most part, the essence of first love and the sting of loss. At 187 minutes, Kechiche takes his sweet time focusing on the coming of age and coming out of 17 year old Adele (played exquisitely by Adele Exarchopoulos).
Adele is a high school junior, fumbling her way through a relationship with a sweet boy, when she locks eyes with the blue-haired Emma (Lea Seydoux) while crossing the street. She is transfixed by Emma and during a night out with her gay guy friend, she follows some women to a lesbian bar, attempting to find the mysterious blue-haired girl. Emma spies wide-eyed Adele sipping a "bull dyke beer" at the bar and saddles up to the underage girl, flirting gently with her. This scene fairly breathes with a comforting eroticism: the older, worldly art student taking the younger girl under her wing.
The two begin an affair that plays out in what feels like real time. I was often confused at how much time had passed between scenes. One scene shows Adele celebrating her 18th birthday and the next has her working as a teaching assistant at a kindergarten. The entire movie probably plays out over 8-10 years, but it could just as easily have been 3 years.
Filmed in extreme close-ups, we see every pore of the actresses' faces. The camera work is hand-held and even a tad nausea-inducing at times. And just as the close-up camera basks in every runny nose, sweaty sex session, and open mouthful of food, the script isn't afraid to reveal the emotional imperfections in the leads' personalities and relationship. It becomes clear that Adele is more enamored of Emma than Emma is of Adele. Emma is also self-absorbed and almost stereotypical in the way her art comes first in her life. Adele is simply her muse. Even though Emma flirts openly with other women, she seethes with jealousy and hypocritical anger when Adele dares kiss a man she works with. During a fight so realistic I was flinching in pain, I thought "Adele is better off without this woman". But since Emma is Adele's first love, she doesn't let go easily.Blue is the Warmest Color has been the subject of controversy for a few reasons: 1) it's about two women in love, 2) there are multiple *extremely explicit* sex scenes (more on that below), and 3) the director (a man) has been criticized for how he treated the actresses on set and for the supposed heterosexual male gaze that shines through this queer film.
I loved how this film treated lesbianism in such a...normalized way. Though Adele gets mocked by her bitchy peers for "eating pussy" (particularly by another secretly gay friend of hers who kisses her at school), the strife Adele and Emma goes through as a gay couple is (relatively) minimal. Brokeback Mountain this ain't. No one dies at the end, thank goodness. However, Adele is squeamish about coming out to her folks and coworkers, using the "it's no one's business" excuse while Emma is very open about being gay, causing tension between the two. But other than those LGBT-specific struggles, the two women go through the ups and downs of their relationship much in the way any couple would. It's refreshing.
As for the sex: oh is it explicit and how. The crowing glory is a 10-12 minute scene that is so explicit I would have thought the actresses were actually having sex if I hadn't know that they used...er...fake lady parts over their actual lady parts. Despite leaving nothing to the imagination, the sex scenes aren't exploitative--in fact, much the opposite, as they show what it's really like to have sex, weird positions and all. The thing I found most awkward about the whole thing is that the characters never talk. They don't say one word to each other throughout the scenes. Which, to me, was really bizarre and unrealistic.
As for the whole "male gaze" thing...maybe? The leads are very stereotypically beautiful and there was definitely something almost clinical about the sex scenes that suggested a sense of "look, guys, these are two women having sex! Watch them. Observe them." While not exploitative, I do wonder if the scenes (and, indeed, the whole movie) would have been different if a woman--specifically, a gay woman--had been behind the camera instead.
One of the most uncomfortable moments, for me, was a scene at a party where a male guest talks about how women receive "nine times more pleasure" than men, and discusses how he's seen women "go into another world" during sex. Another (female) guest accuses him of seeing female sexuality as "mystical". Indeed, this character--a powerful gallery owner and artist--might very well be a stand-in for the director. But I don't know the director, and the movie didn't seem all that offensive or problematic to me, a hetero woman. I'm very curious to hear other folks' perspectives though.
Blue is the Warmest Color, like its characters, has flaws. But its flaws are also, in some ways, its strengths. It's overly long--but it needs to be that way in order to develop the relationship between Adele and Emma. The camera work is so up close and shaky, it's distracting--but at the same time, it lets us see every emotion that flickers across the faces of the characters. The sex scenes come off as a tad voyeuristic--but, hey, maybe it's a good thing for American audiences to be exposed to realistic, non-straight sex scenes outside of porn.
Blue is the Warmest Color is a frank and honest depiction of the emotional journey of two people. Like real life, it is at times frustrating, heartbreaking, and liberating. Not many movies can pull that off.
4 out of 5 stars
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