Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)
Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche
Adèle's life is changed when she meets Emma, a young woman with blue hair, who will allow her to discover desire, to assert herself as a woman and as an adult. In front of others, Adele grows, seeks herself, loses herself, finds herself.
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38 films that influenced Blue Is the Warmest Color
What critics say influenced Blue Is the Warmest Color
Director Abdellatif Kechiche, whose previous film “Black Venus” was also controversial in regard to the treatment of his leading lady, combines the subject matter of the new wave landmark “The 400 Blows” with the notoriety of “Last Tango in Paris.”
Bernardo Bertolucci became famous for his on-set trickery and emotional abuse; Maria Schneider said she felt as if she had been raped after the famous anal-sex scene with Marlon Brando in “Last Tango in Paris.”
In short, there are—as Spielberg, of all people, will have noticed—more traces of Truffaut here than there are of “Last Tango in Paris.”
The few truly erotic scenes in movies—such as Alan Bates and Jennie Linden in Ken Russell’s Women in Love (1969), Bates and Oliver Reed’s nude wrestling match in the same film, Daniel Day-Lewis and Gordon Warnecke in Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)—capture the abandonment and essence of the events, not the mechanics and certainly not for seven minutes.
The few truly erotic scenes in movies—such as Alan Bates and Jennie Linden in Ken Russell’s Women in Love (1969), Bates and Oliver Reed’s nude wrestling match in the same film, Daniel Day-Lewis and Gordon Warnecke in Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)—capture the abandonment and essence of the events, not the mechanics and certainly not for seven minutes.
Kechiche signals his aspirations toward the epic by borrowing Lawrence of Arabia's bifurcated structure and throws in a spaghetti-dinner homage to Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence to tip off just how far we're going to fall.
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Kechiche signals his aspirations toward the epic by borrowing Lawrence of Arabia's bifurcated structure and throws in a spaghetti-dinner homage to Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence to tip off just how far we're going to fall.
It’s arthouse spectacle of the first order, shot across a widescreen canvas more associated with Lawrence Of Arabia’s trek through the African desert, and equally scaled in its emotional register.
The last movie I saw with this many close-ups was The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), and it was supposed to be suffocating.
During a (chapter two) dinner party at Emma and Adèle’s home, the guests appear against an outdoor movie screen that shows Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box (1928), yet another effort to explain and also to worry about an unknowable woman; Adèle and her guests listen to Joachim (Stéphane Mercoyrol), a gallery owner whose favor may be instrumental in Emma’s career going forward.
Those who have true sensitivity deeply despise this movie, so absurd and offensive as having made Ingrid Bergman fucking during 15 minutes in "Casablanca" (I don't need to see it to understand their passion, so why with Adele and Emma we need to see seven orgasms to "understand" their desire and passion?
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Wasn’t that already a stale trope by 1963, when Albert Finney and Joyce Redman slithered through their gastronomic duel in “Tom Jones”?
(For once, you wouldn’t mind a sequel here, as that final, intriguing shot of her has a modern resonance to match that of the famous last frame of Garbo's Queen Christina.)