09 December 2013

Pink Turns to Blue



BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR (A) - This is one of the best relationship movies I've ever seen, and one deserving of its leisurely three-hour unfolding.

Teenage Adele (the riveting Adele Exarchopoulos) is exploring and trying to reconcile not necessarily her sexuality but her repressed passion. She'll end up finding more than she bargained for in Emma (an intense Lea Seydoux from "Farewell, My Queen"), an older, bratty graduating art student with baby-blue hair.

We get only a fleeting glimpse of Emma during the first hour or so. Meantime, we get a good sense of Adele's daily ennui and irritability. Fitting nicely into the film's wall-to-wall sensuality, we get multiple scenes of Adele sleeping and eating (a lot of soft pasta is slurped) and crying (complete with copious snot). She is an awkward high school senior, having unfulfilling sex with a boy, struggling to fit in with her brash female friends but finding more comfort in the company of her gay male pal, whom she follows to a gay bar for a night of dancing. Curious, she wanders over to a lesbian bar, and the full-lipped beauty is welcomed like fresh meat in a shark tank.

Emma, looking more than a little creepy with her heavy-lidded eyes and a Dylan sneer, makes the connection with Adele. Soon after, she shows up outside the grounds of Adele's school, in a pedophile's stance. (Emma's probably no more than seven years older, and Adele is certainly of age, but director Abdellatif Kechiche cleverly sets a tone here with the shot of Emma lurking with that vampire glare.) Heavy petting in the park ensues, and when Adele shows up to school the next day, she is besieged with foul-mouthed insults from those female classmates; their vicious attacks are shocking in both their bile and their ordinariness. (I don't know what's more naive of me -- that I didn't think this would still go on at a high school in 2013 or that I expected the whole European continent to be free of homophobia.)

Undaunted (and clearly turned on like never before), Adele dives into bed with Emma, and soon it's hard to tell who is shark and who is meat. They are voracious, especially in the infamous (and quite erotic)10-minute sex scene in which they consume each other's flesh from just about every angle imaginable. In the afterglow, it's clear that the student has found her teacher and the artist her muse.

But the next hour is when "Blue" earns its hardcore cinematic credibility. If you've ever fallen into a relationship based on base carnal desire, you'll identify with Adele and Emma's attempt at being a couple. I was mesmerized by a party scene in which Adele struggles to find any sort of connection with Emma's crowd of intellectual art buddies. (In a nice touch, Adele has told her parents during one of Emma's visits that Emma is just a school pal tutoring her in philosophy.) Adele plays the happy homemaker role by cooking for the party and trying not to come off as a stupid kid among the adults. She's a trophy wife, essentially, and you chafe along with her and feel her ache.

Exarchopoulos has a way of letting her big beautiful eyes slowly go dead, and in a flash of a moment you sense the question: Why and how did this happen to us? Seydoux, meantime, plays it cold, and Emma almost dares Adele to stray. Indeed, much of the third hour is spent exploring the indeterminate stretch of time dealing with that inevitable fiery breakup. Again, Exarchopoulos lets her sensuality pour out of her (along with more snot), only to reveal that vulnerable, hollow spot inside. In those final scenes, the time frame skips ahead appreciably, and Adele, now teaching young elementary children, wears granny glasses and looks like a spinster before she has hit 30.  

This heartbreaking film effortless walks us through the teenage high-wire route from childhood to adulthood (and all the sexual excitement that can entail), followed by the long slog through the minefield of relationships and the seeming impossibility of connecting in an intimate and fulfilling way with another human being.

BONUS TRACK
Riffing on our headline, we'll pick a more favorite and appropriate Husker Du song to blast:



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