Blue Is the Warmest Color (The Criterion Collection) [DVD]

There are spoilers in this review so don't read on if that bothers you. This is a pro-lesbian film. If that bothers you don't read on. This is not pornography, I was told by somewhat reliable sources that the women “wore things” so you're not seeing real girl on girl sex, just acting faking. So I am told. There is, however, a lot of female nudity and love making sequences. This film is sub-titled, if that bothers you don't read on and don't see the film. One problem with sub-titles is that you are so busy reading them that you don't watch the actors and French directors make their actors work with their eyes and faces. So, you have to see this film enough to see their faces. I first saw Lea Seydoux as the 'assassin who goes flying out the window' in “Ghost Protocol” the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible film. What can I say, I fell in lover with her at first sight. I looked her up and there was this film about to go into theaters. So I waited and it became available as a pre-order and I ordered it. It will it sit on my shelf next to The Lover. There were two “things” that raised eyebrows in 2013, one was “Fifty Shades of Grey” and the other was “Blue is the Warmest Color.” It's about a 15 year old French high school girl who is discovering her own sexuality. Her friends want her to be hetro. She, however, see's this older woman with blue hair crossing the street and the two of them meet with their eyes and it's love at first sight. Adele, the girl, has an affair with a guy who is a senior at school(she's a junior) and they go to bed and have sex but you can see she's not all that into it. She has dreams of the woman with blue hair making love to her as she mastrubates and dreams. At school she meets a girl who is curious but not comitted and they share kisses. Later Adele see's her and goes to kiss her but finds out it was just a passing fancy. For our young girl it was not. She, like other students, goes to a crowded political gathering in the town square with union people and students. One of her friends, a guy who is gay, takes her to a gay bar but she leaves and walks back to her house and passes a lesbian bar that she goes into just to 'see' what goes on. In there she is confronted by the older woman with blue hair. They chat. The share a drink. They part and the woman in Blue moves on with her friends while Adele goes home. The woman in blue meets Adele near his school and the two walk away while Adele's friends call after her. The woman does her portrait and they chat. The woman says she's into 18 year olds and older (Adele is 15). They part. Adele is confronted by her “gal pals” who now thing she's a lesbian. A “pussy eater.” She is confronted and gets into a fight and is osterized. Adele meets up again with the Woman with the Blue Hair and Adele seduces her. One of the men Adele crossed paths with in the male Gay Bar said: “Love has no gender.” That is what this movie about. It's about a 15 year old girl trying to find out what she likes with a 30 year old who can get 5-20 years in jail for kissing the backside of a 15 year old girl or just being with her totally naked. She goes to dinner at Emma's house and they have oysters. Adeles doesn't like oysters (remember Tony Curtis in Kubrick's “Sparticus”? Emma goes to dinner at Adele's house after she turns 18 and they think Emma has a boyfrieind (they don't yet know about Adele). Orgasmic! Adele becomes Emma's “muse' and poses for her painting. Even in the “gay world” Adele has a hard time being “suzie home maker ” even in the gay world while she does learn to make spagettie from her parents. Adele moves in with Emma, who is a struggling professional artist and Adele is her model. Adele is more in love with Emma than Emma is with herself and her art. Slowly they fall apart. Emma stays out late at night doing 'work'. Adele takes up with a man from the pre-school where she works. As a result of this affair Emma throws her out. Much later they meet at a restaurant. Adele is now the Alpha Dog. But the love between Adele and Emma is not let to be anymore. Later Emma invites Adele to her exhibit. There she meets a man from her past and they talk then part. She leaves. He goes after her but doesn't know which way she went. She walks home alone. He just walks. The film is about: Discovery. Confusion. Mistrust. Betrayal. Hate. There are people in this world who say Jewish people can't marry Gentiles. Whites can't marry blacks. Red Heads can't marry Brunettes. You have to decide if you side with Hitler and his Master Race concept of if you let people be what they are and love who they choose. It's up to all of you to decide and remember that others decide about YOU as well! This is a fantastic film. Watch the eyes. Watch the faces and ignore the skin and nipples. This film is about YOUR ultimate freedom and if you don't get it someone, someday might get you! Sorry, but that's ultimate reality! This film won the Palm D'Or. Cannes Film Festival's greatest award. The award the Taxi Driver, Appoclipse Now and many other great films won. This film is a great novel. It is worth reading. It is not easy reading. You have to go beyond the bare skin, nipples and moans and look into their eyes past the sub-titles. Afterall, it is a French film and they don't make films like American's make films!

It started off a bit slow, but only took about ten minutes and I was hooked for the remaining almost three hours of this movie.Unpretentious and real.I loved it

A good romance in American cinema is surprisingly difficult to find because most films of a romantic nature are either romantic comedies or romantic melodramas. They're a dime a dozen. But every once in a great while, you get a film that not only casts off the rom-com or melodrama usually associated with a romance story, but actually draws you in to the relationship in such a mesmerizing way with smart and absorbing storytelling and unbelievably brilliant performances is one of the rarest things imaginable. Director Abdellatif Kechiche's BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is that film.Based on the wonderful award-winning graphic novel by Julie Maroh, BLUE is the story of Adele (Adele Excharopoulos), who begins the film as a naturally beautiful 15-year-old high school student who is just trying to do her best to stay uneaten in the feeding frenzy of adolescence. She keeps with her friends; she dates a cute boy; she pleases her working-class parents; she does well in school. But all that changes one day when she walks across a street, and sees Emma (Lea Seydoux), a haunting and beautiful older college student with dyed blue hair. They share a gaze, and in that instant, Adele is transfixed. She can barely move. She has really felt that thing we all look for: love at first sight. After losing her virginity with her boyfriend as an attempt to deny her "abnormal" feellings, she clearly doesn't feel the love and desire for him that she wants to, and breaks it off with him. Through a sequence of events, she has a chance meeting with Emma at a gay bar, and they become friends. The friendship clearly blossoms into something more, and their passions reach a fever pitch as they make love for the first time. They begin a relationship that is hidden from Adele's family and friends, but is open and accepted by Emma's. The relationship spans several years from Adele's student days and to her becoming a teacher of kindergarteners, and Emma changes from starving artist to toast of the town. But their relationship has problems. Despite the length of time they've spent together, they seem to be losing one another. Does love overcome, or is the passion of youth weighed down by the practicality of adulthood?When this film was presented with the Palme D'or, the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival, it wasn't just presented to director Kechiche, but also to leads Excharopoulos (this is her first major film role) and Seydoux (who some filmgoers might recognize from American films like MIDNIGHT IN PARIS or MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL) and the reasoning behind that is that they were all equal parts of what makes this film so remarkable. Kechiche directs the film using a lot of close-ups, allowing the audience very much in the lives and minds of the characters that inhabit the film. He also spares the audience any obvious artistic flourishes. There is barely any soundtrack to the film that isn't ambient sound from the settings within the film, so there are no music cues that instruct the audience how to feel. But Kechiche's skill behind the camera pales in comparison to what is possibly one of the most revelatory screen debuts I've ever seen, and that is from Excharopoulos, who so bares herself in both body and soul that it may be one of the singularly most immersive performances I've seen since Charlize Theron's amazing turn in MONSTER. Seydoux is as close to Excharopoulos's level as possible, which is an obvious challenge, but she plays the wiser, edgier and more experienced Emma close to perfection opposite Adele's wide-eyed, voracious youth, hungry for knowledge, experience and love.Both regretfully and triumphantly, the film's most talked-about sequence is a nearly 10-minute love scene between Adele and Emma which, while being graphic (but not unsimulated), is exciting, erotic, tender, a little clumsy, and beautiful. It gives the film its NC-17 rating, and I regret that it's the scene that most articles and reviews tend to bring up, but I also think it's a triumph because no one has talked this way about an NC-17 film since the film that effectively killed the rating being taken seriously, and that is Paul Verhoeven's SHOWGIRLS. Another thing that is brought up in regards to this film is the seemingly endless war of words between Kechiche and his two leads, but more than anything, that's just fodder for the gossip columns and not worth the time to remark on it any further.For fans of the graphic novel, there are certainly differences that will surprise and possibly disappoint them. A major plot point is dropped from this film in favor of something that seems more realistic, and that actually works in the film's favor, however, if how the film plays out is how it played out in the graphic novel, it would not have worked. It's best to think of them as two separate but equally amazing pieces of art that share a great deal, but one story works better in the graphic novel, and one works better in the film.To me, this is the most romantic film since Ang Lee's BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, and let me qualify that statement. Yes, they are both romance epics about same-sex love, but for whatever reason, I haven't seen another film between the masterpiece of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN in 2005 and this film in 2013 that reflects what it truly feels to be in love, and is also so achingly beautiful and sad and heartfelt and real as we watch the relationship progress, flourish and disintegrate through time.BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is certainly one of the very best films of the year and possibly of the decade, and has what is certainly to be the two best female performances in recent years. I can only hope that Exarchopolous and Seydoux are remembered and rightfully recognized during Oscar season.

Good movie, sad love story