Up Close and Personal

Movies: Blue is the Warmest Color

*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

See it for Sandy

Movies: Gravity

A month or so ago, when Alfonso Cuaron's visually stunning film Gravity arrived in theatres, famed astrophysicist and model for one of my favorite memes ("Watch out, we got a badass over here") Neil deGrasse Tyson took to Twitter to criticize the film's scientific holes. He did so with love in his heart though, concluding that he "enjoyed Gravity very much".

I felt the same as deGrasse Tyson after seeing the heart-wrenching and extremely stressful film. Not that I could even begin to understand the science (or lack thereof) behind Gravity. But simply put, the film is not about being lost in space so much as it is about suffering from clinical depression and choosing to persevere.

*As always, spoilers ahead!*

Gravity focuses on two astronauts: Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney). The two (plus a third guy who dies in the first 20 minutes) are taking a spacewalk to repair a hubble telescope when a cloud of unexpected space debris (from a destroyed satellite) hits them, severing Stone from her tether and sending her spiraling into open space.

Kowalski, who is less a three-dimensional character in his own right and more just George Clooney in a spacesuit, finds Stone and, with the use of a jet pack, heads towards a Russian space station. The plan is to use the space station's small escape pod to zip over to another space station (a Chinese one) and use that station's capsule which is equipped to re-enter the earth's atmosphere. Still with me? So, basically, the whole "Sandra Bullock lost in space" part of the film is only a small portion of the movie as a whole and it's more about her making her way to the space station with the correct equipment to get back to earth.

So (and seriously, major spoiler here), Stone and Kowalski make it to the Russian space station, but at the last minute, the tether between the two breaks and, though Stone is able to hold on to Kowalski with a parachute-type thing, he realizes that he's dragging her away from the station and cuts himself loose to save her--so then he spirals out into space, directing her to continue into the space station to save herself.

And this is really where the meat and potatoes of Sandra Bullock's performance emerges. We learn earlier that Stone had a four year old daughter who died. She doesn't have a spouse and doesn't speak of any other family or friends. It seems unbelievable that NASA would send a person clearly in grief with little or no social support into space, but whatever! It's a movie! While many actresses might be tempted to overplay Stone's agony--with weeping and gnashing of teeth and all--Bullock plays her like the actual mother of a dead child might act. When she talks about her little girl, her voice goes flat. Her eyes go a little dead. The way Stone has dealt with her child's death is to let it crush her so completely, that she can't convey an emotional response. This seemed very realistic to me and very much how a depressed person would act--shutting down in order to survive.

As Stone attempts to save herself despite mishap after mishap, there are moments were she is ready to lay down and die. I didn't blame her at all. The agony of losing her child combined with the horror and loneliness of space would have made me want to turn up the carbon monoxide and drift off into oblivion myself. But a vision of the unsinkable Kowalski gets her back on track. Kowalski's insistence on Stone's survival reminded me, perhaps oddly, of Titanic. The same dynamic between Rose and Jack is present between Stone and Kowalski, minus the romantic element: he's a charismatic guy who is optimistic in the face of death, and willing to nobly sacrifice himself to save another human being. It's a bit Hollywood, but again--I was suspending some serious disbelief with this whole movie.

I spent most of the movie curled up in a little ball in my seat due to the stress and tension of the film, but needless to say--Sandra Bullock fucking makes it. She rides her fiery little capsule back to earth and ends up in some lake in Asia somewhere. As she crawls to the shore and tests her wobbly legs out, it's a primal scene. She is an animal that chose to live despite all the shit life threw in her direction.

To sum up: what I didn't like about Gravity was the lack of scientific realism, which seemed to be sacrificed in service the the emotional heart of the film. I also thought George Clooney's character and performance, while not bad per se, was basically just George Clooney playing himself in space. He was a little too cute and charismatic for the role of someone who knows they're going to die.

But what I did like was Sandra Bullock's rock solid performance as a woman who chooses the harder path: life, with all its pain, over death. Also, the cinematography is beautiful and is one of the biggest draws of the film--see it in 3D, and in IMAX if you can. It looks VERY realistic (as far as I know, since I've never been to space).

If you can suspend your disbelief and surrender yourself to this emotionally wrenching film, Gravity does come off as a small masterpiece from a virtuoso director.

4 stars for the film itself, plus .5 for the exceptional visual effects = 4.5 out of 5 stars

His Soul Rose Up Like a Bird

Movies: 12 Years a Slave

The horrors of American slavery cut a deep gash in our nation's history, and that wound has never fully healed. Nor should it. I've written before that the evils of America's past (not just slavery, but Native American genocide, Japanese internment camps, etc) are a burden every citizen should--and can--carry. In the same way that we celebrate the triumphs of our collective past, we must do our part in mending our sins.

American slavery was a genocide in itself. Even if the intent was not to kill the body, it was most certainly to kill the will and the humanity of the slave. If a slave could read and write, that was a threat. If a slave plotted to run away, that was a threat. If you treated a slave as a fellow, equal human being, that was a threat. And so slave owners, slave traders, and individuals who stood by had to make sure they didn't see slaves as human, and more importantly, slaves didn't see themselves as human.

No film I've seen illustrates this cultural, collective choice to systematically dehumanize American slaves as well as director Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave. What's more, the film not only shows the dehumanizing effects on slaves themselves, but on those who tormented them.

Based on his 1853 memoir of the same title, 12 Years a Slave is the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man living in Saratoga, New York, with his wife and two children. Played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Solomon is a gifted musician--a violinist--and a well-off and well-respected member of the community. When he is offered a two-week gig playing for a traveling show in Washington, DC, he can't resist the income. But after a night of merriment, his employers drug him and sell him into slavery.

The fact that Solomon is born free is what makes this story so effective. He not only must deny his actual name (he is given the name Platt when he's sold) and never bring up his wife, children, or the truth about himself, he also must actively hide the fact that he is an educated man--which proves difficult when dealing with vicious, condescending slave owners. Solomon is someone we can all identify with and it makes his random enslavement all the more terrifying because we know what it is to be free--and so does Solomon.

Yet, as torturous as it must be for Solomon to be a man stripped of his freedom, it also helps him survive, and, ultimately (uh, spoiler alert?), regain his freedom. The fire, the anger, and the hope never leave Solomon, even after facing increasingly atrocious horrors.

Solomon is initially sold to Mr. Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch, who I do enjoy seeing outside of memes on the Internet), a relatively kind man who is "sentimental" and fair towards his slaves, and even gives Solomon a violin to keep. But one of Mr. Ford's overseers, Tibeats (Paul Dano, doing his best pathetic, sniveling little worm here), enrages Solomon to the point where Solomon beats Tibeats with his own whip. Ford certainly can't keep Solomon after this incident, and he sells him to the vile Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender, playing an evil man so accurately, it's chilling).

Life on Epps' plantation is hell. The slaves pick cotton by day and those who pick less than they picked the day before are whipped. Epps wakes his slaves in the middle of the night and forces them to dance for him and his wife. Worst of all, Epps is obsessed with one slave in particular--Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o)--and rapes her on a nightly basis. But Patsey's agonies only begin with her master's attentions. His jealous wife (Sarah Paulson) hates that his husband is attracted to Patsey and forces her to endure even further torments since she can't direct her hate where it belongs--at her psychopathic husband.

If my descriptions of this film sound like torture porn, please know that director McQueen, whose previous films Shame and Hunger also went to very dark places, shows the exploitation of slaves in the most non-exploitative, yet honest way possible. His camera doesn't flinch from revealing the welts on Patsey's back after she's whipped or the naked slaves being forced to bathe outdoors while clothed white people watch. McQueen diligently captures these humiliations without snark, without apology, and (thank Christ), without pruriency. 12 Years a Slave is a film that respects the memory of American slavery.

Despite the torture, rape, and death all around him and Epps' attempts to break him, Solomon never gives up--he takes numerous risks to get in touch with his family (in the hopes of having his free papers sent--a depressing detail in an of itself, the fact that Americans with black skin even needed free papers to begin with). Even though these attempts fail, and nearly get him killed, his memory of his family keeps him looking for opportunities to find a way out of slavery.

When at last the opportunity arrives, it's cathartic without being overly sentimental. Solomon is reunited with his family--his children are grown now, and his daughter has a son of her own. I imagined if I were Solomon, I would have gotten down on my knees and kissed my families' hands, feeling like they were angels on earth.

Ejiofor, whose previous work includes the fun (but somewhat silly) Kinky Boots and the underrated Dirty Pretty Things, carries a lot of weight on his shoulders--and in his bewitching eyes. The story of the American slave is not exactly a cake walk, and few directors have succeeded in doing it justice. But the team of McQueen and Ejiofor (both black British men, not-so-incidentally) manage to do this dark chapter justice.

12 Years a Slave is emotionally exhausting, but well-worth seeing. Brilliantly acted, beautifully filmed, 12 Years a Slave stares into the soul of hatred and reveals how love and hope conquer all.

5 out of 5 stars