When teenager Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) falls in love with Emma (Léa Seydoux), her whole life changes.
As the relationship progresses, and their lives diverge, Adele goes from experiencing the euphoria of first love to first heartbreak.
Ten years later, Blue is the Warmest Colour is a wounded beast of a movie.
Time did not highlight its flaws - the critiques were there from the beginning, including from inside its own tent. Lead actresses Léa Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos were frank about the appalling way they were treated by co-writer - director Abdellatif Kechiche.
I did not watch Blue is the Warmest Colour in the cinema - I watched it about a year later, on YouTube. Someone had uploaded what I assumed was a rough cut - there were time codes along the top and bottom.
I always assumed I had not seen the released version, but based on this viewing, I noticed no differences, so maybe it was the released cut.
Last weekend, my local arthouse hosted an anniversary screening and I was curious to see it on the big screen.
The one element that reveals the movie’s flaws are the sex scenes - at least the full-length sequences.
I want to make a distinction here, before going into these scenes. There is a movement I have seen online where people are criticising sex scenes in movies for simply being there. I disagree with this stance - there is a puritanism to that line of argument that goes against my ideas of art and expression.
In the context of Blue is the Warmest Colour, sex is important - to the central character, and for the story. The extended sex scenes are important - they are supposed to signify key moments in the couple's relationship.
They fail in a couple of different ways.
Aesthetically, they almost feel out of sync with the movie around them: Over-lit and shot in extended wides and overheads, there is a chilly awkwardness to the blocking, and the actors show no sense of investment.
Functionally, it never feels like you are watching the characters falling in love. Instead, it looks like what it is - a pair of actors struggling with a lack of choreography, purpose or knowledge of how this is supposed to go. There were moments where I found myself trying to figure out the logistics of specific shots. You know an erotic scene is not working when you are trying to guesstimate the actors’ heights, to work out where they were in relation to each other.
You can feel the discomfort of the performers, and it feels like the filmmakers’ bullying tactics towards them are the spectacle being showcased, rather than the pleasure of the onscreen characters.
I was thinking about it going in, but these scenes really got my internal monologue going. I spent the movie thinking about it on two levels - in one I was completely immersed in the diegesis the film was creating, and in the other I was questioning how it was created.
Would the film have been better with a more collaborative and comfortable atmosphere? It is not a hard question to answer, and it left a bitter undertone to the whole viewing.
The actresses were lauded for their performances, and they remain the film’s strongest element - but it feels like a true sense of intimacy and understanding of the characters and themes is always just of reach. The film feels like it is striving for a sense of empathy that it cannot reach because it fundamentally lacks that capacity. And the film often feels like it is reflecting that absence.
There are moments of intimacy and eroticism that work: Adele’s initial fantasy of Emma pleasuring her is genuinely erotic, filmed in an impressionistic style that builds from close ups of her blue hair to a final clench; the scene where Adele and Emma make love in her parents’ house feels more naturalistic, with lots of chatter and kissing.
There is plenty of nudity and sexuality in the film, and one could argue it is part of the film’s attempt to immerse us in the lives of the characters. With the previous examples I have mentioned, that seems to be the case, but there are other points where one has to question the film’s intentions (there are a lot of shots which either begin or end on a pan to Adele’s butt).
The camera itself feels split, between capturing a sense of intimacy and the character’s inner life, and a blunter, vaguely objective distance. And there are times where those choices work and do not: sometimes the attempts at intimacy feel like vaguely assembled coverage, and sometimes the focus on a single wide shot is effective, like in the scene when Adele lies down alone on the park bench where she first hung out with Emma.
It is a rough, conflicted film - which makes me more interested to go back to it.
Sometimes you go back to a film and you might completely change your opinion. And in this case, I feel cooler and more conflicted toward Blue. And that excites me. I feel like I will be returning to this film again.
On this occasion, it felt like the limitations of the filmmakers’ vision and experience were exposed.
The other reason why I cannot shake it off is I cannot deny that it got to me again.
The film’s CPU, and saving grace, is Exarchopoulos.
Her open face is so exposed, so filled with the conflicting impulses of youth, that it overwhelms the movie.
Whatever criticisms I have, the power of that performance is undeniable.
The two scenes which always stayed with me remain the film’s two power blows: the break up scene, and the couple’s reunion at the coffee shop.
If the two extended sex scenes are these messy, incoherent, wound-like obstructions in the movie’s attempt to bring us into the passion of this relationship, the break-up and attempted reconciliation overwhelm them.
There is a tenderness and ferocity to the way the actors are relating to each other that is palatable.
The breakup is so awkward and violent in its emotions, it is legitimately stressful. It was giving me PTSD flashbacks to old family arguments. After spending almost three hours with these people and being in their shared world, watching it shatter in close up is horrifying.
It is the effect of the movie in miniature:
We are sitting in close proximity to Adele, watching her fall in love, suffer the downturn and spin out of the final breakup. Somehow, in spite of its flaws, there is still a cumulative power to its sheer length and deliberateness in showing us this person literally transforming into an adult.
And that sense of verisimilitude is key to its thesis. This is a love story without a story. Or it is a familiar story - there is nothing exceptional or dramatic about it. It is just a snippet of a familiar part of life.
At the beginning, a highschool English teacher talks about the importance of predestination to the concept of true love.
Blue is the Warmest Colour has no such illusions: Adele ends the movie without Emma.
She does not even end up with Samir (Salim Kechiouche), the actor she reconnects with towards the climax of the film. It is a neat almost-subplot that I had completely forgotten about.
Midway through the movie, Adele spends all day preparing for a party that Emma is throwing for all her artist friends. Adele is isolated from the other people, including Emma. The one time she is engaged is when Samir asks her about herself, and seems genuinely interested in her.
At that point in the movie, I thought it was an interesting addition to a terrifically sad scene. But then he pops up at the end, when Adele has reconciled herself to moving on.
Going back to that opening scene discussing predestination, the ending plays on the cliche of the final romantic resolution - Samir notices Adele has left the art gallery and runs out after her… in the wrong direction.
Regardless of the filmmaker’s intentions, a fascinating aspect of the film is that its fumbling grasp of its characters' perspective is part of the text in an explicit way - there are multiple scenes of men trying to explain or express an understanding of female desire and failing. It is perhaps an irony then that the film is unable to avoid similar pitfalls.
I do not think Blue is the Warmest Colour is a movie that needs to be rescued from obscurity. I think it is still worthy of discussion.
I feel like I have written multiple conclusions to this review throughout it. So I will not hang around.
I do not think Blue is the Warmest Colour is a masterpiece. But it is a film that continues to fascinate me as much as it frustrates me.
And I look forward to it continuing to fascinate and frustrate.
