Some have accused the film of being an advanced exercise in the male gaze a queer romance filtered through straight peopleвЂ™s imaginations of what that should look like. As manyВ other critics have noted, its sex scenes are as lengthy as they are explicit the author of the graphic novel upon which Blue is based has dismissed them as inaccurate pornography. ItвЂ™s also arguably exploitative at times. French director Abdellatif KechicheвЂ™s controversial, three-hour coming-of-age love story jumps from close-up to close-up of characters eating, kissing, touching, tonguing, crying, and butt-slapping, all passionately and voraciously, often with little else in the frame. Thank God we won the Palme d'Or, because it was horrible.' (Kechiche has responded by calling Seydoux an 'arrogant, spoilt child', amid mutterings of legal action.) All of which somewhat undermines the film's apparently open-minded attitude toward its leads, although it's a credit to Exarchopoulos and Seydoux that not even this cloud can overshadow the weighty achievements of their believably intense and emotionally draining performances.Watching Blue is the Warmest Color is an awfully carnal affair. As Seydoux says: 'In France, the director has all the powerвЂ¦ and in a way you're trapped. Since its premiere in Cannes, much attention has been paid to the film's divisively explicit sex scenes, with Maroh herself likening the 'brutal and surgical display of so-called lesbian sex' to heterosexual porn that a gay audience would find 'ridiculous', and concluding damningly: 'As a feminist and a lesbian spectator, I can not endorse the direction Kechiche took on these matters.'Д®qually troubling are the cast and crew's tales of mistreatment on set, with both lead actresses variously telling the press that they wouldn't work with Kechiche again. At times it ceases altogether, leaving AdГЁle to battle on alone in the wake of insurmountable (and self-inflicted) loss.Д«ut through it all we never doubt that the love between them is real, that they are both caught in the throes of an unruly, intoxicating passion that occasionally threatens to engulf and overwhelm them.

After the inevitable culture clashes (played out in juxtaposed dinners with their respective families) and social mismatches (Emma's artisan crowd are quietly condescending towards aspiring schoolteacher AdГЁle), their relationship grows, changes, falters, reawakens. Exarchopoulos is AdГЁle, struggling to come to terms with her sexuality amid a culture of homophobic abuse until she meets blue-haired Emma (Seydoux), an artist with a forthright sense of self. Originally titled La vie d'AdГЁle, chapitres 1 & 2, Kechiche's raw love story traces the formation and disintegration of a relationship so powerful that it transforms the life of its coming-of-age heroine. Their portrayal of a blossoming, fragmenting relationship is shot through with genuine grace and conviction even when the film itself descends into indulgence. Certainly the performances by LГ©a Seydoux (already an important screen presence) and newcomer AdГЁle Exarchopoulos are extraordinary. When Abdellatif Kechiche's lengthy and 'freely inspired' adaptation of Julie Maroh's graphic novel Le bleu est une couleur chaude won the Palme d'Or at Cannes earlier this year, its two lead actresses were officially recognised in the citation alongside the director, an unprecedented acknowledgement of the defining role of the key cast that flew in the face of the festival's longstanding love affair with the haughty tenets of auterism.

Blue is the warmest colour (2013)