Blue is the Warmest Color

Movie, 2013, NC-17 (French)

Premise - High school student, Adele, finds her way into a lesbian bar and immediately falls for a blue-haired woman, Emma, she had been eyeing on the street in secret. Over several years, the two explore the depth of their feelings for one another - emotionally, sexually, and artistically. Never in her life had Adele ever dared been with another woman before.

Review - This film is always listed in important LGBTQ films, particularly because it's a film about the "L." Honestly, I don't think I have ever watched a lesbian film in my entire life. Gay films exist by the handful, but lesbians I have only ever seen as a subplot of television shows. If you want to talk underrepresentation in media, attractive gay, white men make up so much of the already limited LGBTQ films.

I was attracted to this film primarily because I've seen certain shots before included in film compilations and every single time I was blown away by the intimacy in the main character's (who I later found out was named Adele) eyes. How much love can you put into one look?

Falling for Adele was immediate. She is one of the most beautiful women I have EVER seen on media or in real life. I was trying to think of who she reminded me of, and came up with Brie Larson + Leighton Meester + Hannah Murray + Millie Bobby Brown + a few of the prettiest girls I knew from school, mixed together as a beautiful young French woman. Falling for Emma took a lot more effort as, through a typical heteronormative lens, she possesses less conventional beauty. If you watch from Adele's perspective, however, she is nothing but enamored in lust and attraction from the moment she lays eyes on Emma for the first time. Even if I personally lack the attraction, you can see it in Adele's eyes. Her acting is so vulnerable.

I see a lot of parallels between this film and Call Me By Your Name, which is also a lustful, erotic LGBTQ told from the perspective of a young, inexperienced homosexual who becomes enamored with a slightly older wonder. The primary difference is that Call Me By Your Name takes place over one summer. This film takes me by surprise by taking you over the entire journey of a long-lasting relationship. It's a 3 hour film that tells years worth of story - and I'm a SUCKER for that. What happens after the part where they fall in love? What does normal life look like?

This film is also far more explicit than any film I have ever seen on a mainstream media platform. I was surprised Netflix was even allowed to have this. At NC-17, there are explicit shots of genitalia (both men and female) and explicit sexual acts that are clearly not acted (direct contact of genitalia and mouths on genitalia). There was real sex happening on screen and a lot of it. (Contrast to Call Me By Your Name, which is incredibly lustful without once having an explicit sex scene). I had to get over the shock and praise the fact that I was watching it alone.

Explicitly sexual or not, every shot felt intimate. The film was beautifully cinematographed, but I have to say I got almost dizzy at times with how close we stay on Adele's face for so much of the film. We watch her eat food incredibly close up, the contents inside her mouth visible as she chews. We saw her snot drip down her nose when she cries. We saw everything.

The color grading is also gorgeous. As a color is in the title, and color is a major motif throughout the film, I have to give my praise to how beautiful the color blue stands out in this film in relation to all of the other colors.

Lesbianism is so silenced and so contorted by male gaze - it lacks genuine exploration. So I appreciated what felt like a more honest telling (still directed by a man though, so I imagine there was controversy over the way in which he shot the sex scenes). It was honest in a way that allowed me to self-explore what attraction I could or could not have to a woman. I came away from it without ever feeling a threat to my own heterosexuality, but more open about the beauty and sexuality of the female figure. (92/100)

Quote - "I have infinite tenderness for you. I always will. My whole life."

What to watch for - Adele, as I have said, is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I think I confirmed my own heterosexuality by not once every wanting to be WITH her, but spending the whole movie wishing I WAS her. That I could look like that or even emanate a fraction of the beauty she does. I want to make a lookbook of all her different hairstyles. She wears her hair messy in every single scene, constantly playing with it, throwing it up into messy buns, pinning it back... I wish my hair cooperated like that.

Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche

Distributed by Wild Bunch (France)