Review of Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) by Stanley F — 02 Dec 2013

So what of the title here? Blue is the Warmest Colour maybe hints at what we see in the film - that there is little warmth or love at all on show between Adele and Emma. Emma is all the "older man", preying on the attractive and vulnerable Adele, played convincingly open-mouthed and blubberingly by Exarchopoulos. Emma meets Adele as Adele is just beginning to explore the adult world and is unsure of who she is. Sexual attraction brings them together, although the sex scenes are over-long and lacking in a any convincing portrayal of intimacy and connection. I found myself hoping for some more meaningful scenes whenever the clothes came off. This director seems to misunderstand that in films,particularly with sex, less is usually more.

Adele's character is well fleshed - teenage exploration and first sexual longings are well acted and I feel the Director has a handle on this aspect of the film. Once Adele throws her lot in with wannabe artist Emma, she soon finds herself playing the isolated housewife trying to please the "husbands's" work colleagues with nice food that she washes the dishes for herself while Emma lies in bed and reads a periodical. It is like re-visiting the 20th century in gender stereotypes, only with a female in the role of the patriarch whose work is "serious"and "important" and who doesn't see the point at all of Adele's passion and skill of connecting with the small children she teaches, and who doesn't appear to wash a dish or clean the house once in the whole film. Interesting that the only souls who are appreciative of Adele's soft feminine heart in this film are men - offering her a seat and appreciation as she serves food to the assembled Emma-art-crowd who are opining pompously.

When Adele flings with a male colleague at work, reacting to her isolation and powerlessness in the relationship, she is unceremoniously thrown out of Emma's house and life for her indiscretion. The only thing missing here to complete the steroetype was a good beating. And the egotist Emma completes the sacrifice at a post-break-up cafe meeting when she nauseatingly opines to Adele "I don't love you any more but I will always have infinite tenderness for you" . Weasel words as once again the selfish heart finds a way to disguise its own limitations and lack of real love.

So it's not the film I thought I was going to see - strangely it appeared more to me as a reference to how gender stereotypes are re-invented through the generations as love and desire are confused, how the egotist continues to self-aggrandise at the expense of the loving and vulnerable hearted, who foolishly fall for the egotist's self-appointed aura and play into the assisted-living that such characters need to exist.