Lea Seydoux (left) and Adele Exarchopoulos
The controversial Palme d’Or winner, a lesbian romance featuring explicit sex scenes, has been acquired for release in the UK.Blue Is The Warmest Colour will be screened for censors at the British Board Of Film Classification before it can be released, most likely in November, after the London Film Festival.
While the sex is full-on, graphic, and leaves nothing to the imagination, it’s not offensive — even if the two big set-piece love scenes did make me blush like I’ve never blushed before.
In fact, the sequences are among the most beautiful I’ve seen on screen in a long time (and I’m not just saying that because I’m a bloke).
The director Abdellatif Kechiche and his terrific leading ladies Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos handle the steamy moments supremely well, in that they grow organically out of the story.
Blue Is The Warmest Colour is about a 17-year-old Paris high school girl called (and played by) Adele. She is in a relationship with a fellow male student, but she knows there’s something missing.
She’s unable to articulate what it is until she spots Emma, played by Seydoux, a slightly older fine-arts graduate, as she’s walking across a road.
Emma arouses something in Adele and they meet, by chance, much later in a lesbian bar. And from there . . .
It’s not all about sex. The movie also mixes in concerns of class and education.
I was thrilled when the Cannes Film Festival jury decided the Palme d’Or should be shared between Kechiche and his stars, Seydoux and Exarchopoulos.
I think it’s a groundbreaking work because it’s one of those rare movies that helps change the weather. It brings something that has been in the closet out into the mainstream.
You don’t have to go to see it. But if you’ve got two hours and 59 minutes to spare this autumn, give it a whirl.
Let’s hope the film’s distributors at Artificial Eye persuade the censors to keep it intact.
