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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