Movie Review: Blue is the Warmest Color [2013]

Blue is the Warmest Color is nearly three hours long, very bold, natural, extravagant and sexy adventure of Adele (Adèle Exarchopoulos) who accidentally falls in love with Emma - a woman with blue hair. Director Abdellatif Kechiche takes us on the journey through life of 15 year old girl exploring her sexuality, her life, her passions and interests with the assistance of people she meets on her way ahead.

Adele is a daughter of middle class parents, going to middle class school, is interested in french literature and philosophy and wants to be a teacher. Her life is just too normal and monotonous, but this is going to change when an older guy from school asks her out. Since Adele never thought she was guys' favorite and all these attention is quite new for her, she feels that something changes and kind of feels happy. But real happiness and passion comes when she accidentally meets Emma and here comes "questioning" whether she truly enjoys with boyfriends company or not. The answer NO leads to breakup.

New relationship develops dizzily and lasts several passionate years. With its ups and downs, each and every second of Emma's and Adele's lives is shown with great accuracy and realism. Movie makes you as involved as characters, binding you to the story as if it was your personal.

Blue is the Warmest Color has some very important dignities out of which Adèle Exarchopoulos's lead performance has to be number one. Adele, who's not 20 yet, gives one of the finest female performances of this year for portraying emotional, delusive, all-time-crying character. Such reality of tears, laughs, smiles, depression, sexual excitement is not a job every actor is capable of doing. She is the reason why everything in this movie gets that natural and involving. As I said above, movie tells a several year story of Adele and accordingly, we clearly see how her character develops and changes, kind of grows up from being a teenager to being a woman. She changes the way she dresses, walks or ties her hair. Those changes happen so masterfully that it becomes obvious only when you finish watching movie, because then your mind clicks "oh, she's transformed into someone so different".

Another good thing about this film is Léa Seydoux's performance as Emma, who is less passionate, more realistic and different. And she does an outstanding job by bringing alive a very controversial character.

And finally, a very graphic sex scenes, which supposedly should have brought more disgusts and distraction but instead perfectly accompanies the emotional line of the movie. Mostly those scenes involve Emma & Adele and they are terrifically realistic and detailed. The first one lasted around 15 minutes and it still felt so natural as if I watched two real life lesbians who are madly in love. Kechiche manages something that was not done by most directors, especially in gay theme movies - he proves that sex is a beautiful way to show whole madness of love.  Despite a lot close ups to actresses' nude bodies (that pretty much made you feel Adele's nipples at your nose), it definitely is not a porn (but I there is enough material), it is art. And the whole backstage people working with camera did a perfect job to shoot some amazing views of those scenes.

Writing is good, not as perfect as performances. But it quite successfully deals with simple and interesting dialogues, depth of emotions and plot twists (a bit predictable ones). As for directing, since everything comes down to directors work, he has done a great job, at least, because of tremendous work with newcomers to make them best possible performers for their respective roles.

The only trouble with Blue is the Warmest Color is that it lasts for three hours. Damn too long, even if it is a lot enjoyable. I could not say that any part of it was unnecessary and could have been omitted, but I wished Kechiche made it shorter.

Oscar chances? Having seen it, I am putting Adèle Exarchopoulos in Oscar race for lead actress, for many reasons. She's got good chances, because she is young, gives mind blowing performance, gets naked, has graphic lesbian sex scenes - a very good sex scenes, her emotions very from despair & tears to happiness & tears and she really, really, deserves it.

As for other nominations, I doubt it can get any recognition and frankly, it does not deserve any much. None of directing or writing is that brilliant to get any recognition, but there is a little chance for Adapted screenplay.