Prior History to the Beginning of Blue Flame Exhibition
There had been rumors that Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Colour was to be showcased at Cannes and for some reason the energy was nice but also slightly puzzling. The film was largely sensationalized as bold and groundbreaking, a love story more than willing to plunge into the visceral depths of emotion. The prospects of a three hour romantic epic starring two relatively unknown actresses was tantalizing and mystifying at the same time. Is it a case of unbridled art, or sheer lunacy waiting to happen?
Walking in the theater, emotions were conflicted. The reputation of French cinema precedes it as one steeped in romance, daring passion, and a certain je ne sais quoi, but this film seemed like it was going to be something a notch more base: more visceral, inclined toward the neolithic domain of cinema—the art of the primal—the camera.
Once the Dark Shadow of the War was the winner of the Cannes Film Festival, it became abundantly clear that this film was more than just a romance. The primary cast, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos won the coveted prize along with Kechiche. This only strengthened the belief that the audience was, in no way, going to experience a typical romance film.
A Love Story Featuring An Emotionally Colorful Palette
Adèle, a lower-class adolescent girl, struggles through the chaos and sweetness of first love. Her life dramatically changes when she meets Emma – an usher, confident blue-haired woman. This is where she begins Emma in reverse. It is a fascinating reverse. This is where the epeser love affair begins – towards which the world patiently waits. What starts as a mere glance on the sidewalk carries the possibilities of desire, pleasure, longing, envy and denial.
Adèles egzistencial time is a time of suffering. We all suffer silently with her as she bears the ridicule of her friends, the aloofness of her parents, and the struggle to merge the oppositions of society with her own truth. Unlike Adèle, Emma, an accomplished artist, seamlessly moves through the world of art. Not even her amazement is sufficient to embrace the love overshadowed with envy and unexpressed distance.
Their relationship is characteristically love-drunk and love-stifled at the same time. The legendary spaghetti eating moment is full of narrative-like the so called bedroom moments. Adèle, Emma, screeming outside, the earth witnessed, the ending is brutal and public, a heart ripped open for others to glimpse and bow before the sacrality of the soul.
Adèle Exarchopoulos: A Star is Born in Pain and Fire
Adèle Exarchopoulos is born on the 22nd of November 1993 and started her movie career at the age of 19 in 2012. Before this, she was almost totally unkown, undertaking minor roles in the French cinema and television. Exarchopoulos’ femininity and malleable persona serves as the backbone of the film. Adèle the character goes through a roller-coaster of emotions, along with other fantastical feats, and as a result, Adèle the Actress totally incorporates herself into the character.
Adèle Exarchopoulos’ performance was remarkable, for she defied conventional standards and did not add polish to her craft. As opposed to a polished and seasoned professional, Exarchopoulos was being her ideal self with the character. Having the most natural phase of acting on stage, is a feat so many young actors aim for. Instead of gaining, Adèle lost her self to the character irrespective of the fake criticisms regarding the film, for Exarchopoulos was and still is a history maker. She was the youngest winded with the Palm D’or in the world, and the film did not make her a mere star, she gained cinematory stardom.
Léa Seydoux: Heritage and Peril
Léa Seydoux had a different story than her costar. She walked into the film world alongside Inglorious Basterds and Midnight in Paris. She comes from a powerful French family. Before she stepped into her role as Emma, she had to confront the ‘pretty face’ persona, and her concept of the character had to take a pinky step into the realm of vulnerability.
Seydoux’s Emma, articulate and self-contained, still managed to display her weaknesses. Off the screen, she confessed to underestimating the role’s demands as more than acting, but rather an emotionally and physically invasive experience. Seydoux’s endurance would face a test her as Emma during the several-day-shoot of infamous love scenes.
While as Seydoux’s Emma nurtured Adèle into finding herself, she was ironically also trying to battle and find herself outside her very famous surname.
Seydoux’s style was very controversial. The camera, having an attentive close up, captured the face in meticulous focus for prolonged intervals of time. Every lip tremble, every bead of sweat, every bite of food became art in relished style. Adèle’s ravenous way of devouring spaghetti and oysters was an escapade for her love and zest for life, capturing metaphorical essence in a meal.
The global audiences seemed to possess a dichotomy in the understandings of the intimate scenes. While some described them as exploitative and argued that they represented a male gaze rather than an authentic lesbian experience, others celebrated them as ‘brave’ for showcasing the complexity and intensity of first love. Regardless of the position taken, the emotional rawness of the characters was evident which in itself was a major accomplishment.
The acclaim didn’t come without its condemnation- “Applause followed by the ashes”. The palpable shifts following the Palme d’or, while historic, didn’t come without their mess. Both Adèle and Lea, when speaking publicly, focused on speaking with more difficulty in terms of their relationship with Kechiche. “The set was horrible!” they claimed, the man’s art furthers the suffering of ‘the other’ with a linear boundary in terms of retakes and emotionally turbulent direction.
Cultural Impact
Having weathered the storm, Blue Is the Warmest Colour emerged as an important cultural point in history. For the LGBTQ+ community, especially in places where representation was scarce, the film was simultaneously a gift and a pain, as it was tempered by a director whose intentions were controversial. For film lovers, it was an unparalleled left in acting, as it showcased how talent can overcome barriers of language and borders.
In India, where the depiction of love is commonly bundled with songs and the applause of society, the film’s representation of the subject was a revolution. The absence of a background score during critical moments, the real-time representation of emotions, and the unapologetic depiction of loss – all resonated with audiences who wished for a cinematic experience that was grounded in realism in a society where such portrayals were scarce.
Any film has a ‘sub’ narrative that tells us more about the film. What a lot of people don’t know is that Kechiche supposedly wanted to do more than a hundred takes for some scenes, in which the actors were brought to a high state of emotional tension, then collapsed in tears when the cameras were off. Kaufman, for instance, describes how the breakup scene with Adèle and Emma was shot over a period of ten days, with the Seydoux and Exarchopoulos separated between takes to tension.
The meticulous nature of the remaining of the film was no exception—finding actors who had the physical and psychological capabilities of consuming the 12 plates of food was a monumental task, the plates being Kechiched eschewed even the hint of lathed. For members of the cast and crew, days encompassing 14 or 15 hours without rest were designed so that the active disorder behind the cameras was the same as the disorder in front of it.
Regardless of the still-clear controversies, Blue Is the Warmest Colour was and still is a profoundly human tale concerned with the more tumultuous, existential facets of love. It is in these very details that the film’s artistry lies. The ability to draw in two actresses, one an a newcomer and the other a household name, and generate such a sense of condensation that their lives intermixed with those of the characters is simply astounding. After a decade, the film still lingers, tender, bruising, and as a memory that refuses to fade – a sense of pain that too, is still tied to the film.
Should I write a parallel comparison with Indian cinema and consider the integration of homosexuality in Bollywood, such as in the films Fire and Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga? That approach may better suit an Indian audience.
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