{"id":3877,"date":"2013-12-09T00:00:56","date_gmt":"2013-12-09T05:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=3877"},"modified":"2013-12-11T19:38:58","modified_gmt":"2013-12-12T00:38:58","slug":"blue-is-the-warmest-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/blue-is-the-warmest-color\/","title":{"rendered":"Male Gaze, Female Snooze: A Review of ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Adele
\n

\nBlue is the Warmest Color<\/a> (2013)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/b>Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche
\nScreenplay by Abdellatif Kechiche & Ghalia Lacroix
\nAdapted from the comic book ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’ by Julie Maroh
\n179 min.<\/p>\n

Spoiler-free.<\/i><\/p>\n

As a jaded New Yorker, I typically don\u2019t drool over well-reviewed movies on principle. I\u2019m skeptical of \u2018buzz\u2019 and \u2018hype\u2019 of any kind, and this <\/i>overhyped movie in particular seemed to be generating some intriguingly divisive opinions. Between the overwhelming amount of reviewers (largely male) heralding it as \u201cbreathtaking,\u201d and the author of the original graphic novel, Julie Maroh, calling it a flat-out straight mens’ porno fantasy, I found myself reading articles about the controversy before I even knew it was a movie slated to come out.<\/p>\n

Now call me biased, but I\u2019m going to trust the lesbian author over the male French director when it comes to who really \u201cgets\u201d lesbian love and sex. And as such, I did what any dismissive, self-respecting woman would do and wrote it off as something to miss. But eventually, the whole fantastic vs. awful rhetoric\u2014plus some light peer pressuring from a coworker\u2014finally got me off my ass and into the theater to give it a fair shot. Hey, we already know I\u2019m down to make myself miserable when it comes to movies<\/a>, so why not?
\n
\nI was surprised to find myself pretty split about it. On the one hand, you have a pretty well told story about self discovery, first love, and then the loss of said love. And it never feels<\/i> like a three-hour movie, which is certainly impressive for any<\/i> three-hour movie. It is genuinely, wonderfully shot\u2014full of close ups that give it a real raw and stripped-down quality\u2013 and it’s also refreshingly, if not surprisingly, well-acted\u2014these girls were not hired for their looks alone.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the film, we follow Ad\u00e8le through her normal home and high school routines, feeling insecure and waiting around for other people to give her life meaning, as teenagers often do. Actress Ad\u00e8le Exarchopoulos perfectly embodies the character of Ad\u00e8le, making her recognizable as somebody you once knew, or even somebody you once were. Her journey of self-discovery as an individual, and her devastation over her encounter with heartbreak, is universally relatable. Her infatuation with the artistic and blue-haired Emma is made very believable by L\u00e9a Seydoux\u2019s charm and mystery. Ad\u00e8le’s love is a naive one, whereas Emma’s is largely selfish\u2014and they realistically depict that classic doomed-yet-passionate relationship model. We are fully engaged as we follow Ad\u00e8le’s emotional growth, and the journey is skillfully shown\u2014by the end of the movie, you leave the theater feeling fairly punched in the gut.<\/p>\n

But on the other hand, you have laughably <\/i>explicit and all around pointless sex scenes. They go on so long that you will find yourself actually looking at your watch. Honestly, it wasn’t even the explicitness of these sex scenes that got to me, it was the hollowness of them. By the time these scenes show up, the movie has already established a raw, \u2018life as art\u2019 sort of tone, so the appearance of borderline if not flat-out pornographic scenes really does not shock you per se. They do, however, stick out as fluff\u2014explicitness for explicitness\u2019 sake.<\/p>\n

After the first sex scene between Adele and Emma, suddenly it feels like\u00a0every<\/i>\u00a0emotional scene with Emma is a sex scene. And each one of these goes on for such a boringly long time that eventually you feel like the director is just ticking boxes on some master list of lesbian sex positions, hoping to God the audience will confuse the continuous sound of over-the-top orgasms for actual feelings and meaning. Their entire relationship and chemistry gets lost in a sea of loud groaning, not to mention camera angles that I believe can most accurately be classified as \u2018way the hell all up in dat.’<\/p>\n

I have to agree with Julie Maroh\u2014there’s an overwhelming amount of Male Gaze in this movie which minimizes the real emotion. (Never mind the fact that lesbian sex, as directed by a straight man, starring two straight girls, is arguably questionable to begin with.) But while you\u2019re watching the movie, you do get a sort of Stockholm syndrome about it\u2014the sex scenes are boring, but you start to feel like perhaps they\u2019re trying to tell you something more. But thinking back on the movie a couple days after seeing it, it\u2019s quite obvious that these scenes really have no deeper meaning, and actually just undercut what the rest of the movie was doing.<\/p>\n

At its best, Blue is the Warmest Color is a depressingly realistic coming of age story\u2014what it dresses up with good-looking actresses and steamy sex scenes, it does successfully break down with brutal honesty about heartbreak. At its worst, it comes across as director Abdellatif Kechiche trying to disguise his hard-ons as beautiful and meaningful. I enjoyed the movie, but the more I think about how long and boring those sex scenes were, the more my negative feelings overtake my entire opinion of it. As a friend of mine said, by the fourth sex scene, they could have at least had the decency of giving you a Seventh-Inning Stretch<\/a>, a la, The Room<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Adele
\n

\nBlue is the Warmest Color<\/a> (2013)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/b>Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche
\nScreenplay by Abdellatif Kechiche & Ghalia Lacroix
\nAdapted from the comic book ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’ by Julie Maroh
\n179 min.<\/p>\n

Spoiler-free.<\/i><\/p>\n

As a jaded New Yorker, I typically don\u2019t drool over well-reviewed movies on principle\u2014I\u2019m skeptical of \u2018buzz\u2019 and \u2018hype\u2019 of any kind. However, this <\/i>overhyped movie in particular seemed to be generating some intriguingly divisive opinions, between the overwhelming amount of reviewers (largely male) heralding it as \u201cbreathtaking\u201d, and the author of the original graphic novel, Julie Maroh, calling it a flat-out straight guy’s porno fantasy.<\/p>\n

Call me biased, but I\u2019m going to trust the lesbian author over the male French director when it comes to who really \u201cgets\u201d lesbian love and sex. And as such, I did what any dismissive, self-respecting woman would do and wrote it off as something to miss. But eventually, the whole fantastic vs. awful rhetoric\u2014plus some light peer pressuring from a coworker\u2014finally got me off my ass and into the theater to give it a fair shot. Hey, we already know I\u2019m down to make myself miserable when it comes to movies<\/a>, so why not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,2563],"tags":[3326,3328,3321,3322,3324,594,3325,3327,3323,462],"class_list":["post-3877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-jennas-reviews","tag-abdellatif-kechiche","tag-adele-exarchopoulos","tag-blue-is-the-warmest-color","tag-blue-is-the-warmest-color-review","tag-ghalia-lacroix","tag-jenna-ipcar","tag-julie-maroh","tag-lea-seydoux","tag-smug-film-smugfilm","tag-the-room"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3877"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3909,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3877\/revisions\/3909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}