To put it in as simple terms as possible, Blue Is The Warmest Colour is a story about Adèle, a high school student who finds herself confused and troubled with her sexual identity. After passing a blue-haired girl on the street who catches her eye and an even more confusing, spontaneous and upsetting encounter with a classmate she finds it all to curious and enticing when a close, male friend takes her to a gay bar, she follows some girls to another bar nearby where she sees the blue- haired girl again. A short conversation sparks a relationship that carries us through the rest of the film.
Well, where to start?
To start with, this film is exhaustingly long. 3 hours is too much for so much useless, meandering exposition. It serves nothing other than to keep us away from a plot that is so thin you could go make yourself a cup of tea and come back 20 minutes later and nothing would've happened to push the story along. I'm sure there is an excellent 90 minute film in there somewhere if the editors had been more ruthless in their cutting and the director wasn't so preposterously self indulgent.
The sex scenes are unavoidable, exploitative and sickening within the context of the films creation. The major sex scene that everyone talks about took a gruelling 10 days to shoot and was only the actors 2nd shot on-set together, they literally didn't know each other and were suddenly put together to perform these scenes for an imposing, frustrated director.
Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos have both stated that the 3 hour film doesn't really show how much they shot, that the director would do hundreds of takes of even the most simple scenes, extend scenes and shoot for extremely long periods of time and would become enraged if they laughed even once out of one hundred takes.
Knowing how the actors felt about it (thankfully they have been vocal in interviews about how horrible and unpleasant the experience was) how uncomfortable they were with unchoreographed sex scenes; sex scenes are almost always choreographed, shots and various angles kept to minimal length so that actors are more comfortable and that the experience is as desexualised as possible. They have spoken about how they felt powerless to say anything about it because "The director has all the power. When you're an actor on a film in France and you sign the contract, you have to give yourself, and in a way you're trapped." "In America, we'd all be in jail." – Léa Seydoux
This is perversion and abuse of power in the truest sense. The fact that Kechiche wrote the adaptation, produced and directed the film, apparently even financed some of it himself tells me all I need to know about his intentions. Even Manohla Dargis of The New York Times has written that it "feels far more about Mr. Kechiche's desires than anything else".
I feel awful for Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos for having to endure this "horrible" 6 month shoot and for having to work with this director, of whom they have said they would never work with again. They deserved better than this because their performances are incredible given the situation that they had to work in.
And finally, I also feel bad for the characters Adèle and Emma, their story deserved so much better than this.
Well, where to start?
To start with, this film is exhaustingly long. 3 hours is too much for so much useless, meandering exposition. It serves nothing other than to keep us away from a plot that is so thin you could go make yourself a cup of tea and come back 20 minutes later and nothing would've happened to push the story along. I'm sure there is an excellent 90 minute film in there somewhere if the editors had been more ruthless in their cutting and the director wasn't so preposterously self indulgent.
The sex scenes are unavoidable, exploitative and sickening within the context of the films creation. The major sex scene that everyone talks about took a gruelling 10 days to shoot and was only the actors 2nd shot on-set together, they literally didn't know each other and were suddenly put together to perform these scenes for an imposing, frustrated director.
Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos have both stated that the 3 hour film doesn't really show how much they shot, that the director would do hundreds of takes of even the most simple scenes, extend scenes and shoot for extremely long periods of time and would become enraged if they laughed even once out of one hundred takes.
Knowing how the actors felt about it (thankfully they have been vocal in interviews about how horrible and unpleasant the experience was) how uncomfortable they were with unchoreographed sex scenes; sex scenes are almost always choreographed, shots and various angles kept to minimal length so that actors are more comfortable and that the experience is as desexualised as possible. They have spoken about how they felt powerless to say anything about it because "The director has all the power. When you're an actor on a film in France and you sign the contract, you have to give yourself, and in a way you're trapped." "In America, we'd all be in jail." – Léa Seydoux
This is perversion and abuse of power in the truest sense. The fact that Kechiche wrote the adaptation, produced and directed the film, apparently even financed some of it himself tells me all I need to know about his intentions. Even Manohla Dargis of The New York Times has written that it "feels far more about Mr. Kechiche's desires than anything else".
I feel awful for Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos for having to endure this "horrible" 6 month shoot and for having to work with this director, of whom they have said they would never work with again. They deserved better than this because their performances are incredible given the situation that they had to work in.
And finally, I also feel bad for the characters Adèle and Emma, their story deserved so much better than this.