**Spoiler Alert**
Almost from the moment that director Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Color won the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, the lesbian-themed movie has been the subject of intense debate.
From its graphic, lengthy sex scenes to its three-hour running time, Kechiche's French movie has been the talk of the indie film world. Actress Adele Exarchopoulos plays the 17-year-old Adele, a junior in high school of uncommon beauty who dreams of becoming a grade school teacher. One day on a crowded avenue Adele passes by a young woman with streaks of blue in her hair and that evening Adele fantasizes making love with the object of her desire.
Later, she meets the woman with the blue hair—Emma ( played by Lea Seydoux ), a college art student who returns Adele's ardor. An intense love affair begins and continues until Adele, out of her depth surrounded by Emma's artist friends, sleeps with a male student teacher. The second half of the film covers the end of the affair and Adele's intense difficulties in going on with her life. The emotional climax of the movie arrives in a long scene when Adele meets up with Emma three years after the end of the affair at a café.
The film—which has received an NC-17 rating for its U.S. release—has received rave reviews, with a 90% approval rating on the Rotten Tomatoes website with a composite summing up that describes the film as "raw, honest, powerfully acted, and deliciously intense." But the movie has had its detractors as well—including Manohla Dargis, the female film critic for The New York Times who called the movie "overlong" and wrote that the movie "feels more about Mr. Kechiche's desires than anything else." Out lesbian writer Julie Maroh, whose graphic novel Blue Angel was the basis for the film, has also been less than thrilled with the movie, comparing the sex scenes to porn. Maroh went on the record about the film, writing, "As a feminist and lesbian spectator, I cannot endorse the direction Kechiche took on these matters. But I'm also looking forward to hearing what other women will think about it."
That last sentence articulated my thoughts when I first heard about the movie. Having covered queer cinema for nearly a decade for Windy City Times, I have seen my share of lesbian-themed movies, applauding the ones that I felt deserved it ( Concussion and Pariah, for example ) and taking to task those that didn't. But all this controversy swirling around Blue is the Warmest Color and all those rave reviews—most by white, heterosexual males—which preceded its opening in Chicago—made me want to get the opinion of a lesbian who knew a thing or two about film. As the producer of the lesbian-themed feature Hannah Free, as well as my executive producer on Scrooge & Marley, not to mention a lifelong queer cinema enthusiast, who better to bring to the screening than Tracy Baim, publisher and editor of Windy City Times? The day after we watched the movie Tracy and I talked, trying to decide if blue really is the warmest color. Not surprisingly, we both had strong feelings about what we'd seen. Excerpts from our conversation:
RICHARD KNIGHT, JR. ( RKJ ): Not only did this film win the Palme d'Or but both actresses won special acting prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. So, there was all this initial acclaim and then almost immediately, there was push back about the extent and length of the sex scenes.
TRACY BAIM ( TB ): It's not that the sex was unreal; it's just that it was more like pornography. It didn't feel like the amount of it was germane to a story. It was gratuitous and pornographic. It's not that it was unreal. People have sex in all different ways. That's not really what my objection is. I hated the movie. "Hate" may be a really strong word but I wouldn't recommend it to anybody for a variety of reasons.
RKJ: I liked very much at the beginning of the film as it went through the stages that a queer person would go through at that age when you're 17 and just coming to realize your same-sex desire and to act on it. I liked how the film tracked that. Visually, I loved that first moment when Emma with her blue hair walked by Adele on a crowded street and their eyes briefly met. And later, when she pleasured herself and visualized it—that was really great. I also really liked the first time in the lesbian bar, the first conversation, the kiss—all that discovery—I loved all that.
TB: I liked that too. He just ruined the movie. He made a movie that was twice as long as it needed to be, gratuitous sex for whose purpose I don't even know and his close-ups were Les Miserables close—gross and irrelevant to the plot. He was so self-indulgent with the length of the movie. Everything in the movie was twice as long as it needed to be. Which ruined it. There was wonderful stuff in it—the kids were fantastic ( these are later in the film when Adele becomes a grade school teacher ) but there were twice as many as they needed. The whole drama of the break-up and wanting to get back together felt twice as long as was necessary. So I felt like he ruined a perfectly good movie. When he was close-up on faces and then he would pull back—it was beautiful. But there was just too much preciousness with the close-ups, too much of "I am making a movie." But even though I think he ruined it I did like a lot of it.
RKJ: ( laughing ) Those damn close-ups! Her hair became a major part of Adele's character—it was always in her mouth, in her face, strands in her eyes.
TB: And she couldn't find a Kleenex for the life of her ( Adele cries pretty much through the last half of the movie ). Again, there were some beautiful moments and I like the acting and the actors. I just felt they were used in a way that made the movie ridiculously long.
RKJ: Well, we did see some walk-outs. But again, I liked the build up and I was okay with the close-ups—I liked that you were forced to be in her space so when she finally got together with Emma the camera moved back to encompass the two of them. I also liked when Emma did the sketch of Adele on the park bench and says the sketch needs work—that's the filmmaker giving us the definition of the character. I like when the theme is stated metaphorically like that. I also like that the movie then jumped over certain sections—we don't see Adele's parents coming to terms with her being a lesbian. We just jump to a year later and the two living together and obviously that wall has come down. I liked that.
TB: I liked that, too but they didn't age her well. I couldn't quite tell if she was just playing house or if she really was a year older.
RKJ: I think that was a problem as the years advanced—they didn't really age Adele much. I didn't mind the sex scenes.
TB: I didn't mind them; they just felt ridiculously long.
RKJ: I also didn't find them very sensual. A film critic—who I can't recall—has observed that any time you see people making love on the screen the audience is excluded by the very act and you are thrown out of the movie. I think in some ways that is true—and unless it's done "artfully," which it wasn't here, you're really aware that you are sitting there waiting and waiting for the movie to invite you back in. The scenes were shot like porn but they didn't seem designed to turn you on. I was more turned on by all the stuff leading up to their first sex scene—their first encounter in the lesbian bar was incredibly hot.
TB: Right! That was so much sexier.
RKJ: Oh my God—it was palpable, the desire, the connection between the two. When Emma's friends barge in you want to kill them—you really get into Adele's head at that moment.
TB: Right, right.
RKJ: So, the earlier sections of the film had some wonderful moments. But the minute Adele went out in that too long scene in the bar and danced with the male co-worker and eventually kissed him—I thought, "Oh Christ, its Personal Best again—30 years later!" Or it's The Kids Are All Right all over again. Here we go. If she was that fragile and insecure, why couldn't she have an affair with a woman?
TB: Exactly, exactly. And at the end, of course, we're meant to think that the guy she sees at the art gallery is going to track her down and that's who she's going to be with.
RKJ: The movie lost me at that point. That just seems like such a straight male conceit. Here we go again with Sandy Dennis in The Fox in 1967 being told by Keir Dullea she needs sex with a man to "cure her affliction of lesbianism." ( laughs ) "If only you'd sleep with a guy it would cure you of this weird disease you have of wanting only to sleep with women."
TB: Or more relevant to this movie is that she doesn't need a cure; it's that the woman was the aberration. It's a little bit further than The Fox but not much ( laughs ).
RKJ: And that's 45 years ago!
TB: There were so many things to NOT like that even though there were things I did like I couldn't recommend it to people. Maybe wait until it's available on TV so you can take a pause and come back to it the next day. It really felt like, "I'm a French moviemaker and I'm going to make you sit here for three hours." I understand movies that do that and I have enjoyed three-hour movies many times. This was not a story that was worthy of three hours. If he had cut it in half, I think it would have worked. Ironically, I would have liked more of the family because that was unresolved. She never went back to her family after the breakup or to her high school gay friend. Once we lost that connection to her as a person I didn't care about her anymore. I liked her through her family and through her gay high school friend. But I never liked her again after those characters disappeared from the movie. I realized that I didn't like her for the last half of the movie and you can't not like the central character. So I feel like he ruined his own movie.
RKJ: Well I think you can not like a central character—it's harder to do.
TB: Yes, it's harder to do.
RKJ: It's not that I didn't like her—I just didn't feel a whole lot for her. I, too, wanted to see what had happened with the people around her who cared about her. It was very hard for me to believe that Adele and Emma didn't have some kind of reconciliation earlier than three years later. And I know I was supposed to feel great empathy in that scene in the restaurant where Adele sobbed and sobbed. But I just saw Acting, Acting, ACTING at that point.
TB: I just thought Kleenex, Kleenex, KLEENEX ( laughs )! I have to say, I really wanted to like it. For me, it's like The Kids Are All Right where I want to like these lesbian movies; I want more lesbian movies to be made but who is getting funded to make these lesbian movies is going to be able to decide what lesbians are ( laughs ). And that sucks. If a lesbian had made that movie it probably would never have gotten seen; it probably wouldn't have gotten to Cannes.
RKJ: Well, I'm just going to bring up Concussion which was made by a lesbian.
I loved that movie! That's the woman who gets hit on the head and rediscovers her sexuality and becomes an escort.
TB: I did like it but it wasn't memorable in the sense of a Desert Hearts to me. It was very well done, though and well acted.
RKJ: I liked that it took this very intellectual approach but I also loved that when the lead character decided to become an escort she was clear that she was only going to be with women. That really rang true to me.
TB: I think that's what Kids Are All Right could have been in terms of honesty and truth.
RKJ: So if you had to recommend a lesbian romance?
TB: My top lesbian movie of all time is Tipping the Velvet.
RKJ: Would Desert Hearts be in there? That's probably my favorite … no, Reaching for the Moon ( which is playing at Reeling this coming week ) might just be my favorite.
TB: Desert Hearts is in my top ten. I love the movie The World Unseen, a South African film. It's gorgeous. Fire is one of my top five, absolutely. November Moon from Germany I love. Most of my favorite lesbian films are foreign to be honest so I was expecting more of this because it won the award and it was French and I thought, "Well, maybe they'll get it better." But it was soooo long.
RKJ: In summing up, I would say that I liked how the director took you inside the world of this everyday young woman—sort of like a lesbian version of Weekend—as she's falling in love for the first time. You see these characters up close, under the microscope and the strength is in the details.
TB: There was a lesbian film like this—My Summer of Love—I think, about two teenage girls—
RKJ: Oh I love that movie! That was Emily Blunt's breakthrough movie.
TB: Yeah—a 90 minute movie where the two central teenage girls fall in love and it's lovely and it really gets the sense of them and it doesn't overdo it. We get just enough of them and then it ends. It was beautiful. And that's what I hoped for this.
