Review of Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)
Seen in 2018.
A pretty bisexual nymphomaniac high-schooler falls in love.
Romantic drama. The explicit pornographic scenes are good, but they don’t carry the remaining 165 minutes of the runtime. The purported naturalism was bought at a high cost: Actors exhausted by huge numbers of takes challenging their personal integrity, and so many cuts filmed without actor knowledge or consent that the main character’s name had to be changed—from the source material’s “Clementine” to the actor’s “Adèle”—because people kept calling her by her real name when they didn’t know the camera was rolling.
The story is thin, hitting the minimal obligatory homophobia and accusations of sluttiness. A scene where Adèle’s parents walk in on her having sex was cut, leaving no explanation for why she moves out. Even with such a scene her parents would have been underdeveloped, as are many other characters. Adèle herself is in literally every scene, but even she has little depth. The film succeeded on the basis of competent acting, directorial abuse and titties, with nothing to say.