Blue is the Warmest Colour (or
La Vie d’Adèle, Chapitre 1 & 2) has had a long journey from it’s
premiere in this year’s Cannes Film Festival to rapturous applause to it’s
cinema release, marred by a variety of controversies and a firm critical
backlash. It is now probably impossible to watch the film without consciously
positioning oneself on one side of the ‘male gaze lesbian sex’ debate. Other
issues, such as co-writer and director Abdellatif Kechiche’s working methods
seem answered by the Palme D’Or win and the applause that both Adèle
Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux have been awarded for their performances.
The film is a nearly three hour
long story, which could easily be expanded further and further like Truffaut’s
Antoine Doinel series, detailing the journey of Adèle’s (Exarchopoulos) sexual
awakening and maturity. Beginning with Adèle in school and ending years later
in her adulthood, we see Adèle grow. Following a doomed relationship with
Thomas (Jérémie Laheurte), a boy from school, Adèle begins to question her
sexual identity. After briefly seeing Emma (Seydoux), an older and blue-haired
Fine Arts student, on the street, Adèle comes to suspect that she may be a
lesbian. Her feelings are confirmed when she begins a deeply passionate
relationship with Emma, though their lives are fraught with complications.
Some of the criticisms of Blue
is the Warmest Colour mention the fact that the film is loosely based on a
graphic novel by Julie Maroh, a woman and a lesbian, and, hence, constitutes
the removal of a lesbian voice and it’s replacement by yet another white
middle-aged straight male one (see the conclusion to Sophie Mayer’s review in
this month’s “Sight and Sound” magazine). In keeping with this, Blue is the
Warmest Colour is a film that is not particularly about lesbianism, having
more to do generally with young love. Though the film does not remove the
lesbianism that is more central to the graphic novel, it does gloss over the
homophobia, preferring to tell a love story in which the lesbianism is often
merely incidental. In terms of story arc, Adèle and Emma’s relationship could
easily be a straight one. This, coupled with some long drawn out sex scenes
that many claim have a particularly male, if not leering, perspective, has led
to a lot of criticism that the film is a self-gratifyingly masculine vision of
female liberation. Kechiche even seems to have expected this, making pointed
references to Pierre de Marivaux’s “The Life of Marianne”, a 600-page book
which displays proof that a male author can convincingly present the psychology
of a female character. Personally, this argument seems unhelpful, suggesting as
it does that gender is a bridge that cannot be crossed – that males can’t make
films about women nor women films about men, a ridiculous idea. However, that
femininity is presented more often by male voices than by female voices is a
worthwhile point and, here, Kechiche does not help himself by pointing towards
Marivaux or, for that matter, as he does constantly in one scene for no
apparent reason, G. W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box.
It is only worth addressing these
debates, which ultimately do not offer any clear solutions, because the sex
scenes in Blue is the Warmest Colour are so long, so detailed and so
prominent. Kechiche has claimed that the sex scenes are true to life in that
they are clearly shown as only a part of Adèle and Emma’s relationship, that
there are a lot more scenes set around the dinner table (for instance) so the
sex scenes are not overemphasised and that sex should be presented truthfully.
However, what he seems to have missed is that relationships can be truthfully
represented on film but the sexual act cannot be, since it is such an
off-putting thing to be a third-party, or witness, to. An audience can
vicariously enjoy the aspirations of young love without feeling like a
lecherous intruder and Kechiche’s attempt to represent sex just as anything
else cannot help but make the audience feel as if they are intruding on
something very private. This may display a sexual immaturity in cinema and in a
cinema audience, something given further credence by the fact that the
similarly explicit sex scenes in a film like Y Tu Mamá También are not
so off-putting because the sex is not about love. If this is true that cinema
cannot make sex look loving, then, it seems, like the arguments above that do
not have a solution, that is just the way it is. In short, the sex scenes in Blue
is the Warmest Colour are a misstep.
Forgetting the controversy,
however, Blue is the Warmest Colour is a well-made drama filled with
great performances, particularly Adèle Exarchopoulos, who seems to live and
breathe her character. Léa Seydoux is good too, but she has a lot less to do,
since she is in the role of the girlfriend in traditional cinema, one that is always
underwritten and usually only one further manifestation of the film’s thematics
or the protagonist’s inner landscape (see, for instance, Barbara Sugarman in Don Jon or the mothers in Like Father, Like Son). The film moves at a
good pace, barely feeling its three-hour length with much momentum. As a story
about a young woman maturing and gaining a form of sexual and emotional
independence, it is hard to think of another film that addresses this subject
with such loving attention to detail and a lack of sentimentality. If the
relationship between Adèle and Emma does not say much in terms of lesbianism,
it is more eloquent about a romance across class lines. Emma’s friends and
relatives humour Adèle, who seems to have been exhibited for their interest and
amusement. This is used to show how Adèle is fearless in carving out her own
path, unperturbed by the patronising looks she gets when she says that she
wants to be a schoolteacher, allowing for an ending in which she defiantly
strides away from the camera into a future, one that is uncertain but
absolutely her own. As a side note, the fact that the end features a potential
male suitor (Salim Kechiouche) ineffectually trying to chase after her may give
a lie to the criticism that Blue is the Warmest Colour is merely a male
story with only the protagonist’s genders altered.
The sex scenes were a mistake, and a rather damaging
one, but nonetheless Blue is the Warmest Colour is a moving portrait of
the young woman maturing. It is hard to imagine a female director making a film
with more insight into Adèle simply because she is a woman. It is a story well
told with a great central performance and a film that was vastly over-rated at
Cannes but also one that is ridiculously over-scrutinised now. Great, flawed
filmmaking.
Other Palme D'Or winners:
Amour
The Tree of Life
La Dolce Vita
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