Its multi-chambered heart is certainly in one or two of the right places, let's say. Kechiche sketches this out by having Emma bring Adèle around for dinner with her mum and stepdad. Review: The Croods: A New Age Is a Step Up that Still Leaves You Wanting More. Teens, though, are unlikely to have the patience to sit through three hours of extended literature- and philosophy-class discussions or the equally … Soon after that they're discovering each other's keys to sensual ecstasy, in the movie's already much-talked-about sex scenes. When Emma meets Adèle's conservative folks, however, the food is humbler – spag bol – and Emma has to pretend to have a boyfriend. Blue is the Warmest Color centers on a 15-year-old girl named Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) who is climbing to adulthood and dreams of experiencing her first love. Blue is the warmest color is a super strong drama about love and passion. They are committed to their roles to a degree that could be called exuberant. Blue is the Warmest Color triumphantly revealed love in the extremes, both in its beauty and in its monstrosity. Here is Emma and Adèle's moment, the definitive blaze. Matt reviews Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Color starring Adèle Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux. When we first meet Adele, she's a junior in high … Léa Seydoux (l.) is an art school grad student and Adèle Exarchopoulos is a confused 15-year-old when they meet in "Blue Is the Warmest Color." [ This is a re-post of my review … It is no more authentic or inauthentic than any sex scene, or washing-up scene, or checking-in-at-the-airport scene. Blue Is the Warmest Color is an alright work that has, at its center, an interesting examination of a common story. As it happens, that's not the thing that starts to drive the lovers apart. They aren't hours that fly by, either, nor are they meant to; Kechiche, who as it happens is here adapting a graphic novel by Julie Maroh, intends for his viewers to luxuriate and/or empathize in and on particular details. Having a healthy "love" for the female form, one may sensibly argue, is not the same thing as leering at it. And it isn't as if Kechiche is Max Hardcore, for heaven's sake. Become a member to write your own review. And when Emma's art career takes off, Kechiche shows how she is starting inexorably to outgrow Adèle, and yet it is Adèle who develops a kind of emotional maturity that Emma, the increasingly smug careerist, can't match. It was released too late in French theaters to be eligible for a 2014 foreign-language Oscar. First loves are always the same and always different. Online reviewers have written 995 reviews, giving Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) an average rating of 79%. The are multiple explicit love scenes between two women with graphic nudity. The breakout 2013 film Blue is the Warmest Color has been lauded as one of the most passionate, devastating love stories in recent memory. In any event, this sort of thing is exactly what sets off the most stimulating kinds of post-moviegoing discussions. The Times critic A. O. Scott reviews "Blue is the Warmest Color." Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here. Blue Is the Warmest Color is an alright work that has, at its center, an interesting examination of a common story. I am loath to give away the plot details that some say constitute spoilers, but on the other hand, as I said up front, this is a story of first love, and all stories of first love wind up somehow as stories of first love betrayed. Adèle imagines that the mysterious, blue-haired girl she encountered. The romantic spark between them is a lightning bolt. Led by this internal dissent, the film's critical tide may be slowing, if not turning. But I think that the impact of the movie increases with a second viewing, and my own objections about the lovers' ferocious "confrontation" scene have been answered. Blue Is the Warmest Color 2013 ★★★★½ Rewatched Nov 06 , 2016 LauraBirnbaum’s review published on Letterboxd: He frequently frames Exarchopoulos in particular so as to accentuate the post-adolescent ripeness of her beauty. And once Adèle really finds Emma (Léa Seydoux), in a lesbian bar, it's not long before the student and the soon-to-be artiste begin having intense, soul-searching conversations on a soon-to-be-iconic (for Adele) park bench. Though Blue is the Warmest Color, winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, contains graphic depictions of sex, it is not a voyeuristic exercise but a complex, deeply intense film that elevates one young woman's personal struggle into a drama of universal relevance. In the aftermath of viewing, this strikes one as odd. By Kristin M. Jones in the November-December 2013 Issue. Blue Is the Warmest Color was released in 2013 and has generally received very positive reviews. When the love affair starts, Emma has blue hair; as it proceeds, the blue colour grows out. Feeling no spark with him, or any other guys, she fixates on a blue-haired older girl she sees on the streets of her provincial French town. Servant Returns to Clean Up the Chaos of Season One, START TV Continues My Start Story Campaign Amidst Pandemic. Adèle, played by Exarchopoulos, is the sympathetic centre of the story, a schoolgirl at the beginning and a teacher by the end: the two chapters of innocence and experience. The Times critic A. O. Scott reviews "Blue is the Warmest Color." Review: Blue Is the Warmest Color By Kristin M. Jones in the November-December 2013 Issue There is a vivid party scene at the middle of Abdellatif Kechiche’s sprawling Palme d’Or winner Blue Is the Warmest Color (aka, in France, La Vie d’Adèle: Chapitres 1 et 2 ) that encapsulates some of … Review by Philipp Frank ★★★ That was long and intense! If you like this, also read The Fault in Our Stars or This One Summer. Movie reviews for Blue Is The Warmest Color. Watching Blue is the Warmest Color provides viewers with that rarest of motion picture opportunities: the ability to lose oneself in the life of another for three hours and to emerge having felt something. In detailing the relationship between blue-collar Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), 15, and Emma (Léa Seydoux), an older, sophisticated art student, Blue Is the Warmest Color … Its original French title is perhaps a better guide: La Vie d'Adèle Chapitres 1 et 2. As for the much discussed sex scene, I predicted earlier this year that some sophisticates would claim to find it "boring". Julie Maroh, who wrote the original graphic novel, dismissed Kechiche's adaptation as a straight person's fantasy of gay love. The second charge, that it is exploitative or inauthentic, is also naive. BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is an abhorrent French drama about a torrid lesbian affair between a young artist and a young teacher. At the outset, Exarchopoulos's Adèle is a shy, smart high-schooler who finds that she is lonely and tentative in her social life. Oddly, after going to great pains to establish the homophobia of Adèle's high-school could-become-mean-girl chums, Kechiche doesn't depict the way it might have deposited any fallout in Adèle's life as she moves from school to apprenticeship teaching; nor, after showing a "we're just study friends" dinner at which Adèle introduces Emma to her parents, do we see any of Adele's family life after she moves in with Emma. ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’ by Julie Maroh. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, this finely detailed, intimate epic sensitively renders the erotic abandon of youth. For his latest film, Abdellatif Kechiche returns to themes of love and maturation with Blue Is the Warmest Colour (La Vie d’Adele, Chapters 1&2), based on the graphic novel by Julie Maroh. First loves are always the same and always different. Kechiche has a sense of rapture that extends to all the human senses; Adèle and Emma, in the first throes of romance, eat as much, and as ravenously, as they make love, and there's particular attention given to Emma teaching Adèle how to appreciate oysters. The 2 women kiss passionately and strip nude, and suck on each others breasts. This drama was never supposed to celebrate the equality of their romantic good faith. Run time: 179 minutes. To paraphrase Woody Allen, if it doesn't make the rest of your life look like a massive letdown then you're not doing it right. And once the hurting starts, the performances grow more wondrous and sad. It has very explicit sex with full nudity and graphic depictions of sex acts, mostly between two women, but one with a man also briefly shows an erect penis. The audacity of director Abdellatif Kechiche's "Blue Is The Warmest Color" lies not so much in the fact that it tells the story of a same-sex first love than in that it tells this story in what some would consider epic detail. This long romance is affecting in spite of Abdellatif Kechiche’s direction, not because of it, and that’s never more apparent than during its much-discussed explicit sex scene. But the jury and its president, Steven Spielberg, insisted the prize should be accepted not only by the director, Franco-Tunisian film-maker Abdellatif Kechiche, but also by his two young stars, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos. There is a vivid party scene at the middle of Abdellatif Kechiche’s sprawling Palme d’Or winner Blue Is the Warmest Color (aka, in France, La Vie d’Adèle: Chapitres 1 et 2) that encapsulates some of the film’s strengths and weaknesses. Then there's the ostensible "male gaze" issue. Yes, Kechiche is a male depicting lesbian love; and yes, he's a heterosexual male depicting lesbian love enacted between two very attractive actresses. I highly recommend it to all readers especially teenagers on up. Blue is the Warmest Color is unique in its openness and honesty about same-sex relationships although we never really experience the outsider status in society and … The movie's final sequence is heart-stoppingly ambiguous. (There's a scene in the movie where Emma and Adèle admire the perfect female posteriors in marble at a museum that suggests Kechiche's potential apologia: that everyone should be able to appreciate a beautiful derriere.). The most explicit scene lasts nearly 7 minutes. A good-looking boy who likes her is rewarded with a brief relationship, but he is merely John the Baptist to the imminent Christ: Emma, played by Séydoux, a twentysomething art student. ... BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR. As a heterosexual male myself I am of, well, several minds about this. In detailing the relationship between blue-collar Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), 15, and Emma (Léa Seydoux), an older, sophisticated art student, Blue Is the Warmest Color … “ Blue Is the Warmest Color,” which has now opened in the United States, is a sexual coming-of-age story about a French provincial voluptuary, Adèle (Ms. Exarchopoulos). That night, the woman figures in an erotic dream, and her world is rocked. Abdellatif Kechiche's epic film evokes love in its purest and most passionate form – intense, cataclysmic and unforgettable. “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” Abdellatif Kechiche’s long, sprawling, boldly immersive coming-of-age drama, works just this sort of magic. The notion that they can each go on to find a better or richer experience is illusory. Maymay A Super Reviewer Blue Is the Warmest Color review. Author: Paige Cohen October 24, 2013. MRQE Metric: See what the critics had to say and watch the trailer. [ This is a re-post of my review … A handsome male classmate falls for her, but an unsettling erotic reverie upsets the romance before it begins. His Palme d’Or-winning Blue Is the Warmest Color, based on Julie Maroh’s acclaimed graphic novel, is beholden to a less multi-ethnic premise, but it hums just as vibrantly in its articulation of the refulgent sense of electric connectivity that would seem to forever bind two women when they catch sight of each other while crossing a busy city street. Blue Is the Warmest Color is so thoughtful on love, LGBT issues, and works as both a coming of age graphic novel and a romance novel. So much so that one isn't much bothered by the material that Kechiche elides in his long film. The love story “Blue Is the Warmest Color” was written, produced and directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. Watched it in three parts spread over several days. FILM REVIEW 'Blue is the Warmest Color' 3 ½ stars (out of 4) Cast: Adele Exarchopoulos, Lea Seydoux, Sandor Funtek, Salim Kechiouche. Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a young schoolteacher who is feeling her way through early adulthood and her first … Parents need to know that Blue Is the Warmest Color is a French drama with English subtitles that chronicles a high school girl as she matures emotionally and sexually over about 10 years. Noir City: International 2020. Review: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Is a … As with other entries in the actor turned director’s filmography, his latest masterpiece sports a lofty running time, at nearly three hours … The Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes film festival went to the epic and erotic love story Blue Is the Warmest Colour. A handsome male classmate falls for her, but an … The cockeyed open-heartedness of Kechiche's conception yields a girl-meets-girl-and-so-on story of three hours. While there have been plenty of movie romances not unlike this, there's never been one told in such an ambitiously immersive way. This isn't young love or first love, it is love: as cataclysmic and destructive and sensual and unforgettable as the real thing must always be. Cannes Film Review: ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’ A searingly intimate character study marked by the most explosively graphic lesbian sex scenes in recent memory. The two women meet when Adéle is about to finish high school, and Emma has started college. There is no secret about their relationship, and they stylishly have oysters. Indeed, it would be reductive to slap an exclusive gay-interest label on “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” a bildungsroman and first-love story whose deep and … Director: Abdellatif Kechiche. Their love is cooling. ... Clementine is 15 in 1994 when she sees a beautiful young woman with blue hair crossing the plaza. “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” which has now opened in the United States, is a sexual coming-of-age story about a French provincial voluptuary, Adèle (Ms. Exarchopoulos). (There are echoes here, oddly enough, of Claude Chabrol's little-seen 1990 adaptation of Henry Miller's "Quiet Days In Clichy," starring Andrew McCarthy.). If "Blue is the Warmest Color" is not a masterpiece, and I don't think it is, it's certainly a provocation, but not a puerile one. It no longer looks melodramatic, but rather the icy and violent culmination of a hitherto invisible disconnect between the two women. Blue Is the Warmest Colour should, by all rights, be a bit of a struggle. Yet the point is surely that there is no guarantee that either Adèle or Emma will ever find anything as good ever again. Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. Blue Is the Warmest Color, the Palme d’Or winning drama about Adèle and the woman she meets next, brims with honesty and affection for its subject. What a passionate film it is. Blue Is the Warmest Colour really is an outstanding film and the performances from Exarchopoulos and Séydoux make other people's acting look very weak. Matt reviews Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Color starring Adèle Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux. Pre-publication book reviews and features keeping readers and industry influencers in the know since 1933. Film. It was powerful and gripping in its honesty and fearlessness. It’s a French romance-drama weighing in at almost three hours and featuring more dialogue than you could shake a … It is fictional. While this epic didn’t blow me away as Weekend did, it certainly was a fascinating, intelligent work that justifies its 3-hour length on an intellectual level, even if not an emotional one. As Kechiche shows, that is a bad sign. Review: Blue Is the Warmest Color. The explicit sex certainly grabs the attention, but Blue Is the Warmest Color offers the adult viewer a great deal more to ponder. Seydoux and Exarchopoulos have since said he was oppressive, intrusive, and even tyrannical in the demands he made, especially in the extended explicit sex scene, which took fully 10 days to shoot. First Kechiche throws the viewer into the world of Adèle (Adèle Exarchopolous), a wide-eyed high-school beauty who should, by the standards of her classmates, be wowing the boys, but instead almost breaks the heart of the one fellow she experimentally dates. You may have heard lots of things about this film, but the most important thing to know is that "Blue Is the Warmest Color" is a masterpiece, the first … But suggestions that he got a little carried away here are not totally nuts. Blue Is the Warmest Color stars the remarkable newcomer Adèle Excharpoulos as a high schooler who, much to her own surprise, plunges into a thrilling relationship with a female twentysomething art student, played by Léa Seydoux. Director Abdellatif Kechiche gets amazing performances out of two young actresses and gives the viewer a lot to think about. Emma is always the senior, dominant partner: better educated, more worldly and higher up the social scale. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. The audacity of director Abdellatif Kechiche's "Blue Is The Warmest Color" lies not so much in the fact that it tells the story of a same-sex first love than in that it tells this story in what some would consider epic detail. As the two lovers go, inevitably, out of the state of white-hot attraction and voraciousness and into a domesticity that presents the typical, and typically ugly, problems that an acolyte/ingénue arrangement presents, Adèle seems to grow up before the viewer's eyes in a way that makes Emma's self-possessed confidence look kind of complacent. The cockeyed open-heartedness of Kechiche's conception yields a girl-meets-girl-and-so-on story of three hours. The movie's transportive quality lies almost entirely with its lead actresses. The sequence certainly strikes me as uncompromising and less exploitative than any smug softcore romcom or mainstream thriller in which women's implied sexual availability is casually served up as part of the entertainment, although I will concede one tiny moment of misjudgment: when Emma is painting a nude of Adèle (unfortunately like Leo and Kate in Titanic) and the camera travels up her naked body. Review: Before Turning Histrionic, Uncle Frank Is a Tender Look at Outsider Kinship. Read Blue Is the Warmest Color reviews from parents on Common Sense Media. Blue is the Warmest Color is a masterpiece of human warmth, empathy and generosity, because in a mere three hours, it gives you a whole new life to have lived. Big success in the film business often means opening a can of worms along with the champagne. Blue is the Color of My True Love’s Hair: Kechiche Takes Us Deep Sea, Baby. Blue Is the Warmest Colour is the only mainstream film so far to treat a lesbian affair on equal terms with a heterosexual one. Neither gives off the slightest hint of working to achieve or inhabit an emotional effect. As Adéle turns 17 or 18 (the movie isn’t quite clear), the two young women begin a torrid lesbian affair. At TIFF 2013, Matt reviews Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Color starring Adele Exarchopoulos. 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