By the time I arrived at the Michigan Theater for my 6pm shift, someone had already complained. The nice old lady who generally spent her free time before movies talking my ear off about the theater\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s selection of caffeinated vs. decaffeinated teas had stormed out of an NC-17 rated French movie, and complained to a manager about her problems with watching, I quote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lesbians sucking on each other.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard of the movie \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBlue is the Warmest Color,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve probably heard of it in certain, defined capacities: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s french, it’s about lesbians, and it has explicit sex scenes, one of them 7 minutes long. But the film is also much more than the sum of its controversy \u00e2\u20ac\u201c director Abdellatif Kerchiche and his two lead actresses have created a masterful, exhausting onscreen love affair, a passionate depiction of an young woman’s awakening consciousness.<\/p>\n
The three hour long film follows its young lead, Ad\u00c3\u00a9le (Ad\u00c3\u00a9le Exarchopolous), in tightly centered close-up, first as she lives her life as a normal French teenager, and then as she experiences the awakening of her desires through her passionate affair with a blue-haired, older woman (Lea Seydoux). Ad\u00c3\u00a9le functions as the physical center of the film, and Kerchiche\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s camera never strays far from her body \u00e2\u20ac\u201c she adjusts her uncombed hair, falls asleep with her mouth open, eats with abandon and cries messily.<\/p>\n
The night before I went to see the movie, I spent a slow shift assigned to guard the screening room doors from unwary or curious children. After fifteen minutes of staring at an empty hallway, I took it upon myself to protect the innocents from inside the theater while I watched some of the film. I expected to be lost, at the two hour mark, for lack of context \u00c2\u00a0– but I was immediately transfixed. I walked in on a scene that takes place well into the affair, wherein Emma and Ad\u00c3\u00a9le throw a backyard dinner party to showcase Emma\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s paintings. Ad\u00c3\u00a9le cooks and serves food to the artistic elite as Emma showcases enormous canvases, her paintings of Ad\u00c3\u00a9le\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nude, posed body. Any conversation is focused around art analysis, incomplete and interspersed between food, drink and dance, so I was amazed both at how quickly the acting and direction conveyed the intricacies of the women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relationship. Ad\u00c3\u00a9le is down to earth and practical, serving food, drink, and single-sentence descriptions of her career aspirations \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI teach.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 She emits an embarrassed glow when Emma recognizes her with a toast, but then sinks into disappointment and anxiety as Emma spends her night talking to another woman. Ad\u00c3\u00a9le listens to the PhD students and artists converse over her head as she nods along, the domestic partner; Emma debates with her highly educated friends about different artists (mostly visual artists famous for depicting the female figure) while they devour Ad\u00c3\u00a9le\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spaghetti and admire paintings of Ad\u00c3\u00a9le\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nude body. Later, in bed, Emma urges Ad\u00c3\u00a9le to develop her writing skills, wanting her to want something less simple, but Ad\u00c3\u00a9le resists \u00e2\u20ac\u201c she is fulfilled just by being with Emma.<\/p>\n
Although it’s easy to get a headache over tea lady\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s insistence on being shocked by screentime devoted to lesbian sex, criticism of Kerchiche’s sex scenes has come from a variety of more credible sources, including Julie Maroh, the author of the graphic novel that ‘Blue’ was based on (who called the sex scenes “pornographic” http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/06\/06\/movies\/julie-maroh-author-of-blue-novel-criticizes-film.html). The sex scenes are uncomfortable, but not necessarily because of length. After all, Kerchiche lingers on Ad\u00c3\u00a9le\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s walk to the bus, her tearful consumption of a snickers bar, the leaf in her hair \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so why would he introduce brevity in sex, the realization of the affair\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s intimacy? No, the problem is the change in tone. None of the messiness of sex is admitted \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the female bodies are staged, posed, and pondered by the camera, but we see no glimpse of Ad\u00c3\u00a9le\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s previous physicality, none of the character established by her unabashed eating habits and her moist, crying face. Kerchiche\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s camera also breaks its tight focus on Ad\u00c3\u00a9le, continuity with which would mandate intimate sequences cut up by movement, and moves back to encompass both women. This abandonment of Ad\u00c3\u00a9le\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perspective has a weird effect; it seems that there is a third party is sitting in the room watching, and we become conscious of the camera and of ourselves as viewers. Ironically – \u00c2\u00a0but maybe understandably – \u00c2\u00a0the sex scenes interrupt the intimacy of the relationship.<\/p>\n