On Blue is the Warmest Colour

That there are no good roles for women in Hollywood used to be a far more ubiquitous statement than it is now. In Europe, female actors have probably always faired a little better. That women in film exist purely to be sexualised was a far more common theory than it is now, one most popularly proposed by Laura Mulvey as the Male Gaze. In Blue is the Warmest Colour we are witness to two of the most powerful and engaging performances from two young female actors; newcomer and protagonist Adele Exarchopoulos and the slightly more experienced Lea Seydoux. But does the film, so focused on the lives of women, do anything to advance the idea of women as purely symbols for male objectification? And was it even attempting to?

The ferocity with which these two actors undertake their roles is astonishing and it is the performances that on first viewing make the film such a powerful experience. The director and writer Abdellatif Kechiche frames them in intimate close up and lights them beautifully, so that contrasting ideas of realism and romantic beauty are perfectly juxtaposed.

Blue is the Warmest Colour won the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 2013 and for this reason has received a lot of press. It has also made it on to the lists of many critics’ best films of the year, another reason why it has received a lot of press. It also contains some of the most explicit sex scenes in a film that has gained this level of attention and achievement and sits outside of pornography. And it is within the sex that one may become agitated by the film’s aims.

The narrative follows the romance of Adele and Emma. From the first glance and meeting the parents, through to the honeymoon stage and routine happiness setting in; the fights, the making up, the suspicion, the affair and the break up. The last of which is incredibly emotional cinema. It is therefore natural that sex is a part of this narrative and a film for adults must not feel that it needs to bypass this natural and necessary feature. Yet, the way Kechiche films the sex scenes and their regularity throughout the second act is transgressive. Our observing an intimate romance starts to feel uncomfortable and arousing, the combination of which is jarring.

Kechiche films Adele and Emma’s sexual activities through the eyes of a man wanting to glamorise sex between two women. These scenes stand apart stylistically from the rest of the film. There is no music, far fewer close up shots and in length they go beyond any other scene. We are no longer following Adele’s first real love, we are watching male fantasies in an environment of heightened excitement, for in the cinema, we are not used to seeing this. What Kechiche was attempting to achieve with these scenes is unclear (he would have known the controversy they would create), but it is credit to his two actors that they can keep this love story so involving amongst the explicit sex scenes.