“Blue is the Warmest Color” is divided in two chapters. In the first chapter we’re introduced to Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) a 17-year-old girl studying literature in high school. She’s vivacious, loves to eat and lives a normal life but she hasn’t found love yet. She questions her sexuality, and tries romance with a boy but feels like something is missing. One day, she has a life-changing encounter with a blue-haired lesbian, Emma (Lea Seydoux), and falls obsessively in love with her. The second chapter shows Adele as an adult, and at the end of her relationship with Emma.
Don’t be scared of the NC-17 rating. The sex scenes are graphic, but while watching you’ll get that they make sense and that there is so much more to the film. Abdellatif Kechiche, the director, explores his favorite subjects: women, class and education. Adele lives in Lille, a town in the north of France. Through her journey we see contemporary France with its language and culture. The best parts of the movie are when the director captures “French youth life.” It was like going back to high school and conversing with old friends.
The love story is the subversive part of the movie. Not just because it’s about lesbians, but also because Kechiche’s vision of love is pretty harsh. Something a lot of Twilight fans should watch. Unfortunately the NC-17 rating won’t allow that, though teenage girls should be able to watch it. It is a full and complex portrait of a young woman — something we rarely see in movies.
Though consumed by this first love, Adele also desires to be a teacher and in the second part this desire is fulfilled. And she’s good at it. The classroom is where we see her blooming and being herself. The ending is bitter, but parallels the ending of Kechiche’s second film “Games of Love and Chance”: a young woman turns her back to her first love, the camera and the audience. Thus, “Blue is the Warmest Color” is the story of Adele’s emancipation and coming-of-age. Abdellatif Kechiche tells us that the end of love is not the end of life. I’m eagerly waiting for a third chapter of Adele’s story.