“Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at”. Art critic John Berger’s words have formed the basis of many discussions surrounding Abdel Kechiche’s Blue Is The Warmest Colour, a portrait of burgeoning sexuality and first love that’s as graphic as it is emotionally raw. Without question, the director’s rendering of female sexuality is, for want of a better word, tainted by the male gaze. Seven minute sex scenes and male posturing on the female orgasm are layered onto the screen Pollack-like, with paintbrushes clotted by mythical and mystical ideas of female sexuality.
Charting the passionate seven year arc of a relationship between insatiable young Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) and the confident, artistic Emma (Lea Seydoux), Kechiche captures the innocent idealism of young love, allowing emotion and affection to build in slow, meditative scenes of intertwined gazes and contented silences. However, he also conjures the explosive nature of insatiable desire; his close-ups of Adele’s mouth and the violent grasping of her first lesbian encounter depicting a desperate, clawing need for love, sex and affection.
As muses, Seydoux and Exarchopoulos prove stunning. Seydoux is a smouldering enigma; Exarchopoulos all irrepressible emotion. Whether crying, consuming or kissing, her vanity-free performance speaks to the all-encompassing nature of first love, and the darkness of the pain that follows.
Taking three hours to uncork the mysteries and explore the realities of young relationships, Kechiche and the actresses draw a world so elegant and intimate the passage of time is barely noticeable. It’s a painting you’ll want to step into, and stay in.