I got made fun of, “Blue is the Warmest Color” had hot lesbian sex, and they saw me watching the fucking. But I don’t know why, but coming of age lesbian films always take me back to that relationship I had with a girl when I was in my early 20s. It’s like a passion that you will never experience a second time in your life.
Adele was the naif in the relationship, but somehow she’s also the working class person. Emma is the one who has the upper hand, but maybe she represents the mainstream French society, but maybe the sophisticate bohemian bourgeois class. She was the one who got sick and tired of Adele. The frustrating thing is that you never really understood exactly why the two of them loved each other so much, other than the chemistry was extremely explosive.
Adele is the shy, studious, working class roots, vulnerable kindergarten then elementary school teacher. Emma is the slyer sophisticated, knowing, artist who’s on the verge of creating something of a career. Maybe you didn’t understand why her buttons didn’t get pushed in some ways, but you could tell the difference between it getting pushed or not. A couple creates a world around themselves, and then it culminates in the big party that Emma throws for her arts friends. And that’s when she leaves for a fellow artist. Adele seems to be walking around in a web that Emma the spider has built, and she finds that some part of herself is reflected in that world, and yet she is no longer a part of it.
Adele is a name that means “justice”. There’s no escaping the fact that this film is about class. First, Adele is in a socialist march. Then she’s in an LGBT march. And she’s basically in drag: she was played by a white French girl, but I suspect that she represents to the director his Tunisian working class roots. She’s always struggling. First, as a teenager, she struggles for the acceptance of her peers. She dates a boy out of peer pressure. Then she is thrown out of her high school clique for dating a girl, although there is more of an edge to the rejection by her peers. It almost feels like racism.
There were also a lot of academic discussions in the film. The film starts with a discussion of a love affair in the book in a high school literature class. Then a boy hit on her, and they started discussing books, it didn’t work out: he was interested in music, they weren’t even interested in the same type of music. And while there was a tremendous amount of chemistry with Emma, there were also philosophical differences, and tensions to be worked out. The more worldly one versus the more emotional and vulnerable one. The one who articulates everything versus the one who writes private diaries for herself. The artist versus the muse. The one who throws the parties versus the one who washes the dishes. The one who shucks oysters versus the one who only eats pasta. The one who surrounds herself with children – either the high school peers or the preschoolers – or the one who surrounds herself with adults and poseurs. Think – professional artists are sometimes the most affected people around, while the pre-schoolers are the most guileless people. Emma the promiscuous, who drifts from the arms of her former lover to Adele to the next lover in the manner of a chain smoker, versus the resolutely monogamous Adele. Emma who doesn’t feel ashamed about cheating on Adele, but completely flips out when Adele cheats on Emma. Adele is always in school, whether she’s a student or she’s a teacher. Otherwise she’s the housewife who cooks and washes. She’s always wrapped up in a protective environment. Emma is the careerist, and Adele has to move out of her comfort zone in order to meet Emma. Maybe this “outside of a comfort zone” is a party with plenty of strangers, or a gay bar, or literally right in the middle of the road, or it involves declining invites from her fellow teachers. Whereas Emma is the classic nomad, who only meets Adele after the affair simply because she’s having an art exhibition in the neighbourhood where Adele’s staying. Adele is the one who doesn’t travel. She talks about going to New York or whatever but she never does it.
Adele is like a cocoon whereas Emma is like a butterfly. Adele is either eating something, or learning something, or nurturing young kids. Emma is going from flower to flower. Curating, examining.
Plenty has been written about the lesbian angle, and since I’m not a lesbian I can’t really comment about it. But there are so many dimensions to the movie that sometimes you have to wonder why sexual politics is the center of everything. All the forms of art are touched upon in the movie: dance, the written word, visual arts, philosophy, cooking. The movie is a feast for the senses. It is very French and talky, and people are always dancing with each other with dialogue, trying to get into the rhythm, trying to suss each other out and probe. Pay close attention to what is said between lovers in this movie, because they will always inadvertently reveal to each other why they aren’t right for each other.
The movie begins with a junction in the road, and also ends in the junction of the road. Maybe the symbolism is too heavy handed, and yet it makes sense. In the beginning, she’s trying to catch a bus, going across the junction. At the end, she leaves Emma’s art show, and the guy’s trying to hit on her and follow her, and doesn’t get her. In both cases, they are reminiscent of the classmate – Thomas – who tried to hit on her the first time around, and they’re unsuccessful. The bus reminds us of Thomas. Thomas reminds us of all the connections that weren’t made. The awkwardness of the lingering glances, how teenagers make the gaze dance more complicated than it is. The fumbling. Whereas, the first time Adele and Emma lock glances, you sense that a far more powerful connection has been forged. That’s why Emma is special and Thomas is not.
And then consider the bench under the tree, which appears again and again. It’s the place where she breaks off with Thomas. And it’s also at a similar bench where she has her first rendezvous with Emma. Benches are curious things: when you have two lovers sitting there, the bench is totally imbued with a deep and lasting significance. But at the same time they can symbolise nothingness – just a prop on a path in the middle of nowhere. Love makes you feel either totally full or completely empty.
Thomas is some kind of a symbol for everything that could go wrong in a relationship. He’s a reference point. Whenever you see something that reminds you of Thomas, it’s a bad sign. Adele fucks Thomas, but when she jerks off at night, she fantasises about Emma. Thomas admits that he doesn’t read books. And when Emma and Adele have philsophical conversations that go nowhere, it’s also a bad sign.
Emma has also repeatedly misrepresented her relationship with Adele. First, she was flirting with Adele when she was in the arms of another lover. Then, in the gay bar, when she hit on her, she said that Adele was her cousin. Then in front of Adele’s parents, she was just a friend helping her with her homework. Lise was supposed to be a colleague, but turns out to be the next lover.
I haven’t even mentioned the significance of the colour Blue. Actually, the blue themes might resonate more in the graphic novel than in the movie.
In many ways the lesbian angle becomes underserved – in spite of the ferocious sex scenes – because all these other themes come into the way.
It was put to the director that Adele resembles Antoine Doinel, another troubled French teenager trying to find his way through life, and can’t seem to keep out of trouble, but nonetheless leads a very vibrant and engaging life. And he said yes, there are similarities. Another comparison that I want to draw is to “Last Tango in Paris”, where there are two lovers, they come from such different circumstances, and they build a world of their own, and this affair is some kind of a singularity in the lives because it is so exceptional to their circumstances. And henceforth they are torn apart because of the tension with the context of the rest of their respective lives.
This movie was widely acclaimed upon release, but thereafter the actresses and the director ended up having a very public battle of words with each other. It seemed likely at one point that this movie would end up being called a classic, but people instead talk about how problematic it is, in spite of the great performances by the actresses – either they were great or the director somehow managed to coax out of them the performance of their lives. It was a little surprising that this movie did not make it onto any of the “best movies of the decade” lists. But you can put that down to the Me Too movement, and it would make it impossible to acclaim anything that’s this tainted with accusations of abuse of females.
Music Composition 