memento_mori's Movie Review of Blue is the Warmest Color ( vie d'Adèle, La )

J'adore.
memento_mori - wrote on 05/15/14

I know it is kind of irrelevant to talk about it now, almost a year later, but something kept drawing me back to it, and something made me want to talk about it madly.

I found it a lot more fascinating the second time around, because I accepted it, not for being 'that three-hour French lesbian movie that won the Palme d'Or', but actually as a movie that had a story to tell about life and living and consequences and lifestyle choices and how these little coincidences and decisions can make big differences in your life.

The movie is incredibly French, but that doesn't say a lot, does it?
It's gentle, it's hard-hitting, it's understated and explicit, a wonderful bundle in one.
I mean, the simplistic, yet astonishing style is a very good example of modern filmmaking.
It's basically a modern classic waiting to become an all-time classic, because of the already present elements of French cinema and the lack of restrictions this time around.

There's barely any music, which adds to the realism as well. You can tell when they are playing music in what is their reality to influence their contemporary lives, not to give us, the audience, that much of an expressive look, and I truly respect that. It understands what it needs to show at which precise points.

It also borrows from other movies evidently, for example the bored students in the classroom is - to me at least - a clear allude to The 400 Blows.
A recurring motif that I really liked was the constant traditional eating of spaghetti. It's one of the most un-romantic things I can think of, and yet there's something enjoyable in it, because we all enjoy it. A simple human pleasure, which also reflects the story in general: it's not extraordinary, it's just basic life.

And that's our movie right there. It didn't set out to be sexy. It set out to be raw and powerful in its realism, and somewhere in that process, became poetic.
The truest and boldest romance movie of 2013. Terrible on-set working conditions or not, I love this movie and I love life a little more now, too.