You see that image of a poster for Blue is the Warmest Colour? You do? Great. Now I want you to look at all of those 5 star reviews. There's a whopping four of them framed around the poster's lone 4 star review. And, in my opinion, that positioning doesn't seem accidental; you can almost feel the antagonism of The Times rating as it and its compatriots muscle their way in on The Guardian's assessment, a comparatively meager 4 stars. Admittedly, The Guardian does provide the poster with its greatest single blurb ("Blazingly emotional and explosively sexy"; there's no exclamation point to cap off the statement, but it feels implicit). However, we all know that what a reader first-and-foremost takes away from a review is the rating of said item, not the best tagline buried within the piece. This, Dear Reader, is where the devil's advocate would say: So what? Why should I even give a fuck about the semiotics of the poster when this is, ostensibly, a review about the film itself? Rebuttal: Because, Dear Reader, sometimes the dividing line between "good-and-great" can be infinitely harder to distinguish than the barrier which separates "good-and-bad."
I watched Blue is the Warmest Colour this afternoon, and some of the things I'd heard about it were true while others proved to be false. The film's runtime is a full 3 hours, but the experience moved by more briskly than I thought it might. There is indeed a 5 minute-plus scene involving the two female leads naked and engaged in rather robust vaginal stimulation with one another. (If you're a straight male or a lesbian, enjoy. If you're a gay man or straight woman, enjoy it as an experiment in "wow, they really went there, didn't they?" filmmaking.) But the biggest surprise in store was that, despite the film's central premise of depicting in great detail the love affair between two women, this was not actually a "lesbian movie." You see, while Adele (the main protagonist, who shares a given name with the actress portraying her) has affairs with both men and women the film never forces her sexuality into a binary box; rather, it allows her fluidity to heighten the narrative's proceedings and to, perhaps, imbue certain scenes with an added touch of poignancy.
If the preceding sentence is any indication, I really liked this film. In fact, if I had unilateral control over the Academy Awards, I would retroactively nominate Adele Exarchopoulos for Best Actress (thus eliminating Meryl Streep's completely unnecessary 18th nod). And beyond that, I would have to think very, very hard about whether I would actually give the Oscar to Cate Blanchett over the young Frenchwoman. On this point, I am not being hyperbolic. Ms. Exarchopoulos was only 18 at the time that BitWC was filmed, and she displays such extreme emotional dexterity that it is an uncanny experience to watch her. But here comes the snafu: what should I rate the film?
My initial click of the star-rating feature on the picture's Rotten Tomatoes review page was 4 and 1/2 stars out of a possible 5. Then I exited the tab, closed the laptop, and went and got some Jimmy John's with my dog piled in the backseat of the car. Case closed and judgment rendered, as it were...except it wasn't. All the while I had the nagging suspicion that I may have overrated the film. While on the surface it may seem a trivial thing, the difference between a 4 star film and something more highly rated is a velvet rope I judiciously guard. And in my gut, I knew that this was a 4 star film. But, initially, I overcompensated by a (mere) half star because I felt guilty. Because, sometimes, it's easy to question the validity of one's own opinion if it doesn't align with the prevailing winds around you (and which, in this instance, was the seismic outpouring of acclaim for BitWC). An hour after first rating the flick I was back on the RT site and adjusted what I had initially given the movie which what I believed was in fact more appropriate, at least from my own aesthetic viewpoint. So, here's where I avoid some shitty cliche about being true to thyself and instead say, come back y'hear? And also, if you think it'd be your cup of tea, go watch BitWC pronto. (And it's available on Netflix instant, which should help.)
Blue is the Warmest Colour = 4 out of 5 stars
It's a shame the academy has so many pointless regulations that this film was disqualified from being nominated for anything, but I agree with you in that I can't laud it as perfection the way some have. For one thing, I found the sex scenes gratuitous. Interestingly, I heard there was some backlash from the lesbian community who thought the scenes were so unrealistic that they seemed more like a masculine fantasy anything else. Barring that I thought the film succeeded because it told the story of a young woman's sexual awakening by means of something that was a relationship first and a lesbian relationship second. And yes, Ms. Exarchopoulos is terrific.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to reading more of your posts.