Winner of the Palme d’Or, directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, Blue is the Warmest Colour (La Vie d’Adéle, Chapitres 1 et 2) is a story of young love, self discovery, and passion. Based on the French graphic novel Le Bleu Est Une Couleur Chaude by Julie Maroh, the film is an uncompromising and sincere look inside one young woman’s first relationship with another woman. Raw emotion, explicit sex scenes, and high caliber acting have catapulted this film into international spotlight.

Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is a seventeen-year-old high school student with a passion for learning, literature and American Films. It’s pretty much teenage life as usual until she has a chance encounter with a beautiful young woman with blue hair (Léa Seydoux). Although no more than glances were exchanged, the connection is enough to peek Adèle’s interest. After sexual fantasies and a brief kiss exchanged with a classmate, Adèle decides to venture out with a friend to a gay club, where as fate would have it, she spies none other than the blue hair woman. The young women share a drink at the bar and we learn that the blue haired woman is Emma, an artist studying in her last year at university. What begins as a friendship, quickly blooms into a passionate romance. With Emma as a guide, Adèle begins to explore and probe the depths of adulthood, her sexuality, the LGBTQ community, philosophy, and art.

The film follows the couple’s relationship from first contact to it’s conclusion. We are alongside as the women move in together, start careers, meet one another’s families, and confront the trials of long-term relationships.

Kechiche does an exceptional job exposing his characters’ emotions, the intimate moments between the women filleted open and presented in all their explicit glory. Kechiche’s lens shies away from nothing as he holds the audience’s’ gaze, making the events feel like they are happening in real time. As a result we feel as though we have lived his characters experiences, their joy, their ecstasy, their heartbreak and remorse. Seydoux and Exarchopoulos are phenomenal, it is no wonder that for the first time ever, both actresses were awarded the Palme d’Or.

Blue is the Warmest Colour has just been nominated as one of the five 71st Golden Globes Foreign Language Film nominees.

Astrid Handling

Shown at this year’s TIFF13 : Toronto International Film Festival and the 70th Venice Film Festival (La Biennale di Venezia)