As an art student at the university, Emma seems grown-up and exotic, and she gladly takes the role of mentor. The fact that their relationship is so compelling and emotionally resonant is a tribute to the terrific, raw performances by Seydoux and Exarchopoulos, which won them the Palme D’Or at Cannes, usually only given to directors.Īdele’s relationship with Emma starts on uneven footing. Courtesy of Sundance Selects.Īlthough she bonds with Emma over books – reading for pleasure may be enough to make you an outcast in high school, eager to meet anyone who shares this interest – it starts to become clear that this may not be enough to sustain a relationship. Adele (Adèle Exarchopoulos) (L) and Emma (Léa Seydoux) in Abdellatif Kechiche’s BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR. But while Adele is more mature than her classmates, she’s still very much a naive girl, not the wise and mature-beyond-her-years type that Tracy was. When she admits to Emma, with some embarrassment, that she’s still in high school, I was reminded of Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” when the seventeen-year-old Tracy (Muriel Hemingway) had to beg out from dinner with her boyfriend (Woody Allen) and his forty-something friends to do homework. The first time they speak is at a lesbian bar that Adele wanders into, where she sticks out as the ingenue. This is a film about first love experienced and lost, but the fact that Adele is in high school when she first falls is what colours her relationship with the blue-haired Emma (Léa Seydoux). He does this by shooting largely in close-up, making us privy to intimate emotions, and by inviting us into every facet of the heroine, Adele’s (Adèle Exarchopoulos) impassioned life: we watch her lost in a book, daydreaming in class, eating voraciously, fantasizing while masturbating, sleeping, crying while snot drips down her face, interacting with friends, family, and lovers, and engaging in sex. Abdellatif Kechiche’s greatest achievement in his new film “Blue is the Warmest Color” is to remind us of just how intense adolescence is, both emotionally and physically, in part because everything is still a discovery.

We’re so used to seeing Millennials jumping in and out of each other’s beds – from “Gossip Girl” to “Friends with Benefits” – that it’s easy to start to think these experiences leave no mark.

Emma (Léa Seydoux) (L) and Adele (Adèle Exarchopoulos) in Abdellatif Kechiche’s BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR.

Blue is the warmest colour movies