Review of Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) by Damjan R — 02 Dec 2013

While the acting is top notch, the storytelling is rather sparse and direction one dimensional. Adele Exarchopoulos is very good as the perpetually lost Adele, constantly searching, never finding but never learning or developing as time in her life goes on.

I'm not fan of this straight line storytelling and I'm even less a fan of anemic and one trick direction. Kechiche directs almost exclusively here with shaky cam close ups of faces, which for me got really tiring after awhile, and of Adele's behind, of which he's clearly a fan.

There are a couple of nice scenes where something resembling true direction is shown but those are few and far between. The film does run a little long, despite maintaining attention, but some scenes could have been shorter to give the film more tempo in places.

It's not a bad film, it's just not very good.