Blue Is the Warmest Color

Apart from the NC-17 sex scenes, the buzz of this film made me think it was going to be about the two people on the poster. But from the first frame, it's really just about one — Adele. So much film is spent focused on her face that it's easy to lose contact with other characters and the world around her. But in doing so, I felt very drawn into her thought process, which made the story of her romance to Emma that much more powerful, despite the language barrier and the relationship's keen specificities. Being so drawn in proved very helpful during the breakup scene. On it's own, you see a woman scorned and the sad stupidity of her unfaithful lover fighting a lost cause. But because we know so much about that unfaithful lover, I felt worse, because I know what led her to this place and was sad she couldn't articulate it in the moment. It added to what I think is the film's major achievement -- showing how an ecstatic love like Emma's and Adele's can end up feeling so isolating.

"Adèle" (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is a bit of a fish out of water at school. She doesn't quite fit in and finds the whole "boy" thing a bit of a turn off. Luckily the school also has it's extrovert in the blue-haired "Emma" (Léa Seydoux). She is shunned by her classmates because of the perception that she is just too eccentric for the normal kids, but "Adèle" finds her fascinating. Striking up a friendship, she soon discovers that there is more to be had from this alliance: something that comes with plusses and minuses and introduces her to the extremes of joy and pain. It's an obsession, an infatuation - an addiction, even, for "Adèle" but does "Emma" reciprocate. Is she looking for the same things from their relationship? Now, I'd have to say that there is no need for this story to take three hours to tell. At times it's a bit soapy, repetitive and moves as glacially as our own real-life experiences might have done - and who wants to relive them in real-time? That said, director Abdellatif Kechiche takes his time to carefully craft the characterisations of the women and of their families and the boys who are on the periphery of the girl's maturing personalities. There emerges an effective and engaging dynamic between the pair as the path of their true love most certainly doesn't run smoothly, and with some pithy dialogue and just a little raunchiness now and again, this is a better than average story of the challenges of an awakening spirit conflicted, hormonal and confused. It's worth a watch, but it can be a bit of a slog at times.