Blue is the Warmest Color: stunning exploration of first love

The French drama Blue is the Warmest Color explores first love, capturing the arc of a young woman’s first serious romance with remarkable authenticity and a stunning performance by 19-year-old actress Adèle Exarchopoulos. Exarchopoulos plays a 17-year-old (also named Adèle) who falls in love with an out lesbian five or six years her senior.  The film traces the course of their relationship over the next several years as the couple are challenged by jealousies and their different temperaments and class backgrounds, and as Adèle matures.

The acting is excellent, including Léa Seydoux (Farewell My Queen, Midnight in Paris) as the lover.  But Adèle Exarchopoulos is a revelation.  She is perfect as a teen typically full of curiosity and devoid of confidence, outwardly raunchy but profoundly innocent.  And she has an extraordinary gift to seem utterly alone in a crowd.  After watching Exarchopoulos, I felt as I did after seeing Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone –  I can’t wait to see this emerging major talent again.

This is the first film I’ve seen by Tunisian-born French director Abdelatif Kechiche, who  has twice before won the Cesar (the French Oscar).  In Blue Is the Warmest Color, Kechiche uses the closeup more than any recent director that I can recall, and he is fortunate to have Exarchopoulos, who can pull it off.  It’s an excellent reason to see Blue Is the Warmest Color on the big screen.

Blue Is the Warmest Color is three-hours long, which is an indulgent length, but not too long.  I am usually impatient with movies over two hours and quick to find them overlong.  But Blue Is the Warmest Color kept my interest and engagement for its duration, and I really couldn’t recommend many cuts.

There is a LOT of explicit simulated sex in this movie.   The main characters’ first love scene must sample the entire lesbian Kama Sutra.  That scene, reputed by some to last nineteen or twenty minutes, didn’t seem that nearly long.  The film proudly earns its NC-17 rating by depicting the (apparently very satisfying) sexual aspect of a romance.

But, in the end, it’s all about Adèle’s romance and Exarchopoulos’ performance.   Blue Is the Warmest Color won the top prize at Cannes, and is one of the year’s best films – perhaps the very best.