Sexual Scenes in Blue Is the Warmest Color

Seven years ago Blue is the Warmest Color made history at the Cannes Film Festival when both the film's director, Abdellatif Kechiche , and its stars, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos , won the Palme d'Or. This marked the first time the coveted award was given to both a movie's director and its stars. It also made Seydoux and Exarchopoulos the second and third women to ever receive the award after Jane Campion , who won for The Piano in 1993. Now, we're looking back at this queer love story that had everyone talking through a series of short videos.

Of course, we could never discuss this film without addressing the infamous sex scene, which clocks in at seven minutes. The scene, which took ten days to film, depicts the two leads going through a sequence of different sexual acts and positions, and led to a litany of think pieces both for and against the lengthy scene. Many critics argued that the scene treated the women merely as sex objects, and was clealry filmed from the director's male viewpoint. Marlow Stern, writing for The Daily Beast wrote "The scene looks—and is staged—like porn circa 1970s." And Manohla Dargis from the New York Times wrote the scene, and movie for that matter, "feels far more about Mr. Kechiche's desires than anything else" The controversy was only compounded when the film's lead actresses spoke out against the way Kechiche treated them while filming.

Not everyone was opposed to the scene though, in The New Yorker , Richard Brody argued that the sex scenes in the film is that they were "too good—too unusual, too challenging, too original—to be assimilated … to the familiar moviegoing experience. Their duration alone is exceptional, as is their emphasis on the physical struggle, the passionate and uninhibited athleticism of sex, the profound marking of the characters' souls by their sexual relationship." Wherever you stand on the matter, you've got to admit it's made you think. With that in mind, take these next seven minutes to watch the scene for yourself and come up with your own theories. Do you agree that it's just too good a scene that it offends our puritanical senses by facing us head-on? Or is it a pure work of scopophilia?

(the scene starts at 00:34:18)

After you've watched the notorious scene and come up with your own ideas, wipe off your brow and check out this feminist analysis of the film from Rae's Gaze . Do you agree with Rae's interpretation that while the film is a beautifully acted piece that highlights wonderfully flawed and realistic women, the sex scenes become evermore objectifying the more times you watch the film?

Now let's start to move away from discussing the sex in this movie, and check out three videos of the leads Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos. First watch this interview the two gave at the Toronto International Film Festival. And then reward yourself with these two video tributes to the wonderful actresses. The first is a behind-the-scenes montage of their photo shoot for Premiere Magazine , and the second is a fan-made compilation video of the stars.

And finally, let's change course and get some words from the film's director, Abdellatif Kechiche, by watching this video from the New York Times where Kechiche breaks down a scene from the movie. No, he's not breaking down the sex scene, we've moved on from discussing that, but instead a scene where Adèle, after breaking up with her boyfriend, starts to question her sexuality during a conversation with a fellow female classmate.

Now that you've watched all those videos, how are you feeling? Have your ideas on the film changed? Do you view it as a feminist work of art, or anti-feminist? Do you really just feel like watching the movie again? Remember, everything in a film is open to interpretation.

Sexual Scenes in Blue Is the Warmest Color

Source: https://www.provokr.com/video/lea-adele-exposed/

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