Blue is the warmest color (2015)

Is Blue is the warmest color (Abdellatif Kechiche) a harrowing description of the rush of falling in love (and the pains of falling out of it) or is it rather an exploitative sexualization of lesbians aimed at a male, straight audience? Controversies around this film abound, and it is difficult not to take them seriously. But what about the film (is there such a thing as 'the film itself' - I'm not sure, that type of distinction are valid at times.) The film does capture what it means to grow up in a way that does not quite fall into the usual traps (a cynical attitude towards what is perceived as 'innocence'), even though it certainly focuses on a process of maturation. The high-school kid we see in the beginning, who falls in love with the older art student, changes into a grown-up who has to decide what is important in her life. Blue is the warmest color is a story told from her perspective - it is her awakened and head-spinning love and also the isolation she later comes to feel in the relationship that the audience gets to know. Her partner is always the more experienced, better educated, and they both know it. Later on, the distance that grows between them is portrayed with regard to their different attitudes to the dying romance. This is where the film succeeds - it focuses on the rancor, the insecurity and the desire to reconnect felt by the ex-lovers.

An aspect that hasn't really been brought out in relation to this movie (when so much attention is paid to its sex scenes...) is its preoccupation with class. Adele and Emma are from different social backgrounds, and this is an aspect both of how their affair develops and how it fades out. One comes from a sophisticated family where you eat oysters and talk about art, while the other's family eat spaghetti and trying to act normal. Emma is an aspiring artist, and early on in the film, I worried that the movie would fall prey to the plentiful clichés about beautiful, romantic young artists who love to sketch their amour in a leafy park. But by and by, the image of the art world changed - the viewer notices that we see Adele's changed relation to Emma also from the point of view of the role art and the art crowd has in their lives. In one of the best scenes, a garden party is arranged in their garden. Emma has invited her artsy friends. Adele has prepared to food, and is trying to act the part of the easygoing hostess. The sadness and the insecurity she feels in the setting is forcefully conveyed.

What sets the film apart is how Kechiche never treats young love as an immature stage which you are suddenly over, so that you are now prepared to see what life is really about. The relationship between the two is treated as an encounter and a connection between two specific people, not a 'preparation' where the lover is just a sort of anonymous role. Kechiche, one could say, takes the lives and emotions of young people seriously - they are not reduced to, for example, cynical or plaintive ideas about What It Is Like To Be Young. This is revealed in how much of the film pays attention to nuances in how young people talk and act (and act in different settings). That said, I think the accusation of exoticizing sexualization of lesbians is not entirely unfounded - there are clumsy (yet sophisticated) scenes in which the audience is simply invited to ogle young folks' bodies; I simply don't agree with the people who argue that also these scenes in a precise way show the character of the relation. Instead, I felt that they were orchestrated in accordance with cinematic traditions about how to deal with sex 'without shying away'. There are also other, quite many, tacky details where the film leaves its perceptive route and chooses cheap symbols or references instead (the color blue...).