Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013)
Straight French girl who might be a little curious.
Presentation:
Normally I’m not a big fan of romance let alone LGB films because love by itself isn’t particularly captivating to me as the sole storytelling element. But this was close to being one of my favorites in the genre because of how quickly I connected with the main character. I’m kinda a sucker for these kinds of beating around the bush type of high school romances, and I immediately connected with the lead. She has a quiet, introverted beauty and drew me over Lea Seydoux. This is quite necessary because the cinematography in this film is awful. Shaky digital camera movement, meaningless color, and a pointlessly wide aspect ratio, there’s nothing that speaks to me about this film visually. On top of that, the lighting for the sex scenes look amateur and have lower effort than actual porn videos. I don’t like sex scenes in cinema and they are gratuitously long here. It assumes the display of explicit and erotic sex on screen is in and of itself bold and heroic. For a film about art, I found it tasteless and I ironically skipped forward to story sections. The middle of the film stalled to a halt with unnecessary drama, but it came around by the final arc.
Conclusion:
What otherwise began as potentially my favorite LGB film turned into a massive disappointment. There is no reason this film needed to be 3 hours long and to have that many sex scenes. It felt like I’ve been deceived into watching porn for the story. On the bright side, the sexual thematic parallel with creative versus stable careers was a nice touch, which I think should have had more priority. This movie will probably still provide a cathartic voice for the viewers it caters toward, but for me, I felt it just reduced romance to sex.
Recommendations
VHS killed the video star.