Blue Is the Warmest Colour


Blue Is the Warmest Colour is a 2013 erotic romantic drama film co-written, co-produced, and directed by Abdellatif Kechiche and starring Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos. The film follows Adèle, a French teenager, who discovers desire and freedom when Emma, an aspiring painter, enters her life. It depicts their sexual relationship from Adèle's high school years to her early adult life and career as a schoolteacher. The film's premise is based on the 2010 graphic novel of the same name by Jul Maroh.
Production began in March 2012 and lasted five months. Approximately 800 hours of footage were shot, including extensive B-roll footage, with Kechiche trimming the final cut to 180 minutes. The film generated controversy, much of it about allegations by the crew and lead actresses of poor working conditions on set and the film's raw depiction of sexuality.
At the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, the film unanimously won the Palme d'Or from the official jury and the FIPRESCI Prize. It is the first film to have the Palme d'Or awarded to both the director and the lead actresses, with Seydoux and Exarchopoulos joining Jane Campion, Julia Ducournau, and Justine Triet as the only women to have won the award. It received critical acclaim and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language. Many critics declared it one of the best films of 2013.

Plot

Adèle is an introverted 15-year-old high-school student. She passes an older woman with short blue hair in the streets one day and is instantly attracted. She has sex with Thomas, a boy from school, losing her virginity, but is ultimately dissatisfied and ends their relationship. After having vivid sexual fantasies about the blue-haired woman while masturbating and kissing Béatrice, one of her female friends, Adèle becomes troubled about her sexual identity. Béatrice says she does not want to proceed further and tells Adèle to forget the kiss.
Adèle's friend, the openly gay Valentin, takes her to a gay dance bar. Adèle later leaves and enters a lesbian bar, where some women flirt with her. The blue-haired woman, art student Emma, is there and intervenes, claiming Adèle is her cousin. Emma and Adèle become friends. After Emma shows up at the school, Adèle's friends suspect her of being a lesbian and ostracise her.
Adèle and Emma grow closer and kiss at a picnic. They later have sex and begin a passionate sexual relationship. Emma's artsy family welcomes Adèle, but Adèle tells her conservative, working-class parents that Emma is her tutor for philosophy class. Some of Adèle's old friends attend her surprise 18th birthday party, but Emma does not.
In the years that follow, the two women move in together. Adèle becomes a kindergarten teacher, while Emma tries to advance her painting career by throwing frequent house parties. At one party, Adèle meets Emma's pregnant colleague Lise, gallery owner Joachim, and aspiring actor Samir. Samir discusses America with Adèle while the others discuss sex, and the two become friends. Emma spends more time at the party with Lise.
Emma belittles Adèle's career but encourages her to pursue writing, while Adèle insists she is happy the way she is. Their relationship grows tense as it becomes clear they have little in common besides their mutual physical attraction. Emma comes home late, having spent the evening working with Lise. Out of loneliness, Adèle has sex with a male colleague teacher named Antoine. Emma discovers the cheating and furiously breaks up with Adèle.
Three years later, the two meet at a restaurant. Adèle is happy with her job as an elementary school teacher but has not moved on: she is still deeply in love with Emma. Emma is in a committed partnership with Lise and helps raise Lise's three-year-old daughter, but Emma admits that she does not feel sexually fulfilled. Emma and Adèle kiss, but Emma withdraws. She tells Adèle that she no longer loves her, but that their relationship was special and she will always have "infinite tenderness" for her. The two part with apologies and tears.
Adèle attends Emma's art exhibition. On one wall is a nude portrait of Adèle that Emma painted during their time together. Emma acknowledges Adèle but is focused on Lise and the other guests. Adèle congratulates Emma on her success and, after a brief conversation with Samir, leaves. He chases after her but goes in the wrong direction, while Adèle walks off into the distance.

Cast

Sexuality

Lesbian sexuality is one of the film's primary themes, as the narrative deals with Adèle's exploration of her identity in this context. But some academics have questioned the film's treatment of lesbian sexuality, given that it was directed by a heterosexual man. In Sight & Sound, film scholar Sophie Mayer suggests that in Blue is the Warmest Colour, "Like homophobia, the lesbian here melts away. As with many male fantasies of lesbianism, the film centers on the erotic success and affective failures of relations between women".
The issue of perspective was also addressed in a Film Comment review by Kristin M. Jones, who wrote, "Emma's supposedly sophisticated friends make eager remarks about art and female sexuality that seem to mirror the director's problematic approach toward the representation of women".
One critic has suggested that the film is not a lesbian film, highlighting the exploration of Adèle's bisexuality. Paulina Plazas wrote in IndieWire that throughout the film, bisexual erasure is "central to understanding Adèle's particular sense that she does not belong as she comes of age."

Social class

One recurring thematic element critics and audiences identified is the division of social class and the exploration of freedom and love between the two central characters. The social class division is clear in the two family dinner scenes, with Adèle's conservative, working-class family discussing comparatively banal subjects while Emma's more open-minded, middle-class family mainly discusses more existential matters: art, career, life and passion. Perhaps one of the most significant differences between the families is that Emma's is aware of their lesbian relationship, while Adèle's conservative parents are led to believe the women are just friends.
Some critics have noted that class difference is an ongoing theme in Kechiche's filmography. One Film Comment critic wrote, "As in Kechiche's earlier work, social class, and the divisions it creates, are a vital thread; he even changed the first name of the story's passionate protagonist from Clémentine to that of his actress, partly because it means 'justice' in Arabic. His fascination and familiarity with the world of pedagogy, as shown here in Adèle's touching reverence for teaching, is another notable characteristic".

Food

Kechiche explores how food can evoke varying levels of symbolism, for instance through the sexually suggestive food metaphors of Adèle's liking the fat on ham and her learning to eat oysters from Emma. He also looks at how food can be indicative of social class.

Production

Adaptation

Director and screenwriter Abdellatif Kechiche developed the premise for Blue Is the Warmest Colour while directing his second feature film, Games of Love and Chance. He met teachers "who felt very strongly about reading, painting, writing" and was inspired to develop a script that charts the personal life and career of a female French teacher. But the concept was only finalized a few years later when Kechiche chanced upon Maroh's graphic novel and he saw how he could link his screenplay about a schoolteacher with Maroh's love story between two young women.
Although Maroh's story takes precedence in the adaptation, Adèle's character, named "Clémentine" in the book, differs from the original, as explored by Charles Taylor in The Yale Review: "The novel includes scenes of the girls being discovered in bed and thrown out of the house and speeches like What's horrible is that people kill each other for oil and commit genocide, not that they give their love to someone." In the film, Adèle's parents seem oblivious to her love affair with Emma and politely greet her under the impression that she is Adèle's philosophy tutor. Further themes are explored in Maroh's novel, such as addiction to prescription pills. Of his intention to portray young people, Kechiche said, "I almost wish I was born now, because young people seem to be much more beautiful and brighter than my generation. I want to pay them tribute."

Casting

In late 2011, a casting call was held in Paris to find the ideal actress for the role of Adèle. Casting director Sophie Blanvillain first spotted Adèle Exarchopoulos and then arranged for her to meet Kechiche. Exarchopoulos described how her auditions with Kechiche over the course of two months consisted of improvisation of scenarios, discussions, and sitting in a café, without talking, while he observed her. It was later, a day before the New Year, that Kechiche decided to offer Exarchopoulos the leading role in the film; as he said in an interview, "I chose Adèle the minute I saw her. I had taken her for lunch at a brasserie. She ordered lemon tart and when I saw the way she ate it I thought, 'It's her!'."
Léa Seydoux was cast as Emma ten months before principal photography began. Kechiche felt that Seydoux "shared her character's beauty, voice, intelligence and freedom" and that she has "something of an Arabic soul". He added, "What was decisive during our meeting was her take on society: She's very much tuned in to the world around her. She possesses a real social awareness, she has a real engagement with the world, very similar to my own. I was able to realise to how great an extent, as I spent a whole year with her between the time she was chosen for the role and the end of shooting." Speaking to IndieWire on the preparation for her role, Seydoux said, "During those ten months I was already meeting with him and being directed. We would spend hours talking about women and life; I also took painting and sculpting lessons, and read a lot about art and philosophy."