WORDS: Sarah Kate Fenelon
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is The Warmest Colour is a foreign film that defies the language barrier. As it moves from frame to frame and eye contact to eye contact, the words become redundant and physical expression takes over. Love and sex know no language.
Adèle Exarchopoulos delivers an honest performance as a young girl struggling with her sexuality amidst peer pressure, stigma, homophobia and heteronormativity. The film follows Adele through her young adult life in France as she falls in and out of love for the first time. Rather than just another sexual awakening story however, Kechiche gets up close and personal with lesbianism and the complexities of the female sexuality. Sustained graphic sex scenes between Adele and her lover Emma, played by Léa Seydoux, make us question our exposure to homosexual relations in cinema as well as consider whether this void is filled with heterosexual couples, or even just male homosexuals. When it comes to discussing female sexuality, it seems both art and society are speechless, or at least inaudible. Blue is The Warmest Colour shatters this silence and foregrounds Adele’s self-discovery and sexual awakening- with women, portraying it with a raw, animal quality, which supersedes our expectations of romance and love.
Awarded the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year, Kechiche has officially put the female orgasm on the map. Yet, the film carefully integrates philosophical discussions about love, fate, and biological determinism to ensure we don’t get lost in its more graphic scenes along the way. Perhaps the most interesting question it poses is whether or not pleasure can in fact be shared. As the film suggests, unlike Tiresias, the Greek prophet of Thebes who was transformed into a woman for seven years, the ordinary person is unable to compare the male and female experience either emotionally or sexually. This complicates the matter of intimacy still further as we begin to question whether there can ever be equality in a relationship. One partner always gets the short end of the stick so to speak. These philosophical undertones safeguard the film from being construed as pornographic. Yet, Kechiche certainly walks the fine line between effective and excessive. The importance of fulfillment and enrichment outside of a relationship brings the film full circle and a balance between the two, as Adele demonstrates is difficult to achieve.
Cinematographically, Blue is the Warmest Colour doesn’t really stretch the envelope. The camerawork seems rough and the editing imprecise. Despite this, stunning performances by Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux unify the work and make it magnetic to watch. And while some tender moments are achieved throughout the film, I cannot help but wonder how this film would have been received if it were about a heterosexual couple. Is lesbianism enough of a taboo these days to warrant artistic credibility? Regardless, Blue is a grueling tale of self-discovery, sexual awakening, love and heartbreak; all meaty ingredients, which put in the hands of Kechiche and Exarchopoulos, produce wonderful food for thought.
