Blue Is The Warmest Colour * * * * *

There are two things that people always mention in regard to this film - it’s hot and the acting is extraordinary. Both are true.  To make this drama of an intense lesbian relationship, the director Abdellatif Kechiche  found two young women who are amazingly beautiful (Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos) and I guess that is where the criticism is justified. Did they really have to be so young and gorgeous?  Is this a middle aged man's sexual fantasy? Especially when some of the sex scenes are not much different than watching quality internet porn that specialises in girl-on-girl action.  Or so I’m told.  Never having looked at such an internet site I wouldn’t know (What?! What are you looking at me like that for?)  

Anyway it's quite explicit.  But even so, all must be forgiven because the acting and a style of directing that presents us with an intimacy that goes way beyond their sexual interaction.  There are times - quite apart from the sex scenes - when you feel almost intrusive.  Like this is their real lives.  This is their real relationship.   There are times when the candidness dismisses any notion of “acting”, and this doesn’t just happen between the two protagonists.   All scenes are just diamond cut in their sense of reality. An impassioned fight between them makes you feel guilty for watching them and useless for not being able to stop them.  I later read that one of the actresses would not talk to the director for months after he pushed her so hard to get it right.  At the end of watching this, you really do feel like you know these two girls.  Corny as it sounds, for days afterward I missed them and hoped they were  okay, because I had come to care for them and like them as real people.
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