A French Favorite: Blue is the Warmest Color

I have been begging the girlfriend to watch this movie and since she has not obliged in spite of my constant whining**, I thought this post would help push her into finally giving this excellent movie a shot.

And if you haven’t watched this yourself, please do. You won’t regret it.

This is my personal tribute to the film that almost bumped Titanic off of the number one spot on my Favorite Love Story Films of All Time list (please stop judging me—in the voice of Hugot Queen, Angelica P).

Blue is the Warmest Color (La Vie d’Adèle) is a French film that unanimously won the Palme d’Or Award and received a standing ovation at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

It is also the first film to have received the award not only for its director (Abedallatif Kechiche), but also for both leading actors—Léa Seydoux (Emma) and Adèle Exarchopoulos (Adèle). And not only that, it was also nominated as the “Best Foreign Language Film” at the 71st Golden Globe Awards.

So yes, you could say that it’s one heck of a great movie. I would say so myself.

La Vie d’Adèle (its French title meaning The Life of Adele) is a drama-slash-romance film about two women. But I don’t see this as just another lesbian movie because most of those suck, anyway (seriously). Never mind the gender of the two characters and never mind my personal gender orientation and preference. This, for me, is a beautiful story about two people and that’s it.

Adèle is a high school student who, based on my perception as a mere audience, seems to be confused and unhappy with how and where her life is at and where it’s going.

But she’s still your typical girl teen: goes to school, talks about boys with her friends, goes out on dates, etc. And then one day, one of her girl friends French kissed her (pun intended), and that did something to her.

And then fast forward to when she was out in the city with some of her friends, she stumbled upon a local lesbian bar where she meets Emma—the blue-haired girl that caught so much of her attention and curiosity.

They started hanging out a few days after that night and one thing led to another and oh, you know—they fell in love and the rest, you’ll know once you watch the film.

More than anything else, this is a love story. Any person—gay, straight, trans, or what-have-you—could definitely relate to the story and the lives of Adèle and Emma, both as individuals and as a couple.

I cannot say enough praises and great things for this film because it really is just amazingly one of a kind (I may be a lesbian but this is seriously an unbiased opinion).

I don’t care about your gender preference or sexual orientation, you just have to absolutely watch this film! Although if you’re a rather conservative person, I would advise fast forwarding some parts are there are quite a few very sexual scenes here.

Before I end this post, I would just like to share some of the things that I have noticed and half-concluded about French people mainly because of this film. Not sure how true these things are in real life, though. LOL.

• They talk really fast! It was a bit of a struggle to keep up with the subtitles because of this.
• They like to smoke—a lot. It’s like every single cast member that was featured on screen smoked at one point.
• They’re kind of messy eaters (but in a really cute and adorable way; not the gross, sloppy kind).
• And if you think that the Americans are a very liberated nation, well one has to come up with an entirely new word for the French people. Maybe that’s why the French way of kissing became so damn popular!

I really do hope you give this film a chance. It is an amazing story of finding one’s self, growing up, love, heartbreak, and so much more.

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**As of posting, the girlfriend has already watched this movie and I’m happy to report that she liked it! #AchievementUnlocked