Blue is the warmest colour graphic novel

#Blue is the warmest colour graphic novel movie#

#Blue is the warmest colour graphic novel movie#

Exarchopoulos is so convincing as a young woman in the throes of longing, love, lust and devastating rejection that, in the filmвЂ™s shattering final sequences, filmgoers will sense that theyвЂ™re not watching a movie as much as witnessing the most private moments of someoneвЂ™s life, from its headiest highs to its most crushing, depressive lows.

Not since Kenneth LonerganвЂ™s вЂњ MargaretвЂќ has a filmmaker been so willing to stick with a young female heroine and see her through to the end - or, in the case of AdГЁle, at least one end. But what he and his actresses build in the course of three hours is a vivid, even tactile sense of the classes and cultures each of them inhabits, and that ultimately may prove their undoing. Viewers may initially wonder about the scenes Kechiche chooses to focus on: dinners with each young womanвЂ™s family, for example, donвЂ™t seem to вЂњgo anywhereвЂќ in the conventional sense of the term. As much press as that sex scene has received, far more eloquent is another protracted sequence in which AdГЁle, who has knocked herself out cooking for a dinner party, becomes increasingly marginalized among EmmaвЂ™s far more sophisticated friends. Loosely based on a graphic novel by Julie Maroh, вЂњBlue Is the Warmest ColorвЂќ follows AdГЁle over the course of a decade, in which time she becomes a teacher and settles into domestic housekeeping with Emma, whose bohemian social circle is a quiet and an uncomfortable fit. Reasonable people can disagree, but what sets вЂњBlue Is the Warmest ColorвЂќ apart from sensationalism or pulp are the daily moments that precede and follow the more notorious sex sequence - the myriad otherwise forgotten occurrences that comprise a love affair that, when it inevitably ends, turn out to have been the most important all along. Debate immediately ensued around whether Kechiche was perpetuating an exploitative heterosexual male gaze or claiming new space for representing gay desire on screen. The high point of that tutorial is the prolonged, intimate sex scene that this year made вЂњBlue Is the Warmest ColorвЂќ the talk of Cannes, where it won the festivalвЂ™s top awards (shared by the director and his two fearless leading ladies). The two women fall into a rapturous, physically electric affair, with AdГЁle at first bewildered and finally beguiled by EmmaвЂ™s assured delivery of a sentimental education. Those unforced, quotidien rhythms donвЂ™t perceptibly change once Adele meets Emma (LГ©a Seydoux), a fresh-faced, blue-haired art student she first glimpses on a crowded street, then pursues into a lesbian night club. A naturalistic portrait of the sexual and romantic awakening of a teenage girl - played in an astonishing breakout performance by newcomer AdГЁle Exarchopoulos - вЂњBlue Is the Warmest ColorвЂќ at first seems like nothing new: Portraying the day-to-day life of ExarchopoulosвЂ™s character, also named AdГЁle, Kechiche hews to the time-honored French tradition of dressed-down, realistic staging and style, devoting long, seemingly spontaneous sequences set at AdeleвЂ™s high school and at home with her working-class parents. вЂњ Blue Is the Warmest Color,вЂќ Abdellatif KechicheвЂ™s long, sprawling, boldly immersive coming-of-age drama, works just this sort of magic. Once in a while a movie comes along that doesnвЂ™t just affect how you think or feel, it performs its own kind of physical alchemy, burrowing its way into your consciousness so thoroughly that you feel permanently marked and changed.