Blue Is the Warmest Color 2013

Blue Is the Warmest Color | Blue Is the Warmest Colour | Adèle's Life | La vie d'Adèle | La vida de Adèle

Blue Is the Warmest Color-Blue Is the Warmest Colour-Adele's Life-La vie d'Adele-La vida de Adele

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About the Blue Is the Warmest Color 💬

Acclaimed French filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche's latest film, based on Julie Maroh's graphic novel, finely detailed, intimate epic sensitively renders the erotic abandon of youth. BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is an epic of emotional transformation that pulses with gestures, embraces, furtive exchanges, and arias of joy and devastation. It is a profoundly moving hymn to both love and life.

In a star-making role, Adèle Exarchopoulos is Adèle, a passionate young woman who has a yearning she doesn't quite understand until a chance encounter with the blue-haired Emma ignites a flame and brings her to life. Léa Seydoux gives a fearless performance as Emma, the older woman who excites Adèle's desire and becomes the love of her life. Abdellatif Kechiche's intimate epic of tenderness and passion charts their relationship over the course of several years, from the ecstasy of a first kiss to the agony of heartbreak.

''The best color in the whole world is the one that looks good on you.''

Coco Chanel

15-year-old Adèle dreams of finding the love of her life. When she meets Thomas (Jérémie Laheurte) - a dark, handsome, friendly stranger who falls for her instantly - her dream seems to have come true. But an unsettling erotic reverie upsets the romance before it begins. Adèle imagines that the mysterious, blue-haired girl she encountered in the street slips into her bed and possesses her with an overwhelming voluptuous pleasure. She can no longer deny her true desires - Adèle likes girls.

• A passionate and chaotic love story has begun...

''There's no such thing as chance.''

Léa Seydoux as Emma

That gorgeous, sensual blue-haired girl is a confident twentysomething art student named Emma, who will soon enter Adèle's life for real, making way for an intense and complicated love story that spans a decade and is touchingly universal in its depiction.

''I am happy. I'm happy with you, like this. It's my way of being happy.''

Adèle Exarchopoulos as Adèle

''I have infinite tenderness for you and will my whole life.''

Léa Seydoux as Emma

In front of others, Adèle grows, seeks herself, loses herself, finds herself...

• AN INTERVIEW WITH ABDELLATIF KECHICHE

Q: Why did you choose to adaptation Julie Maroh's graphic novel ''Le bleu est une couleur chaude'' (''Blue Angel'') for your fifth film?

Abdellatif Kechiche: The film is very loosely adapted from the graphic novel. It was the combination of reading the graphic novel and a film project I've had in mind for a long time that triggered my desire to make ''BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR'' (''Adèle: Chapters 1 and 2''). Since ''Games of Love and Chance'' [2003] I have had a project for a screenplay about the career of a female French teacher passionate about theatre. I was interested in developing a female character who was passionate about her professional life who wanted to pass on her enthusiasm. At the same time, this teacher had to take on the repercussions of her private life on her work: her loves, her bereavements, and her break-ups. I met many such teachers, men, and women while making ''Games of Love and Chance.'' I was moved by the way they lived their vocation. They were true artists, who felt very strongly about reading, painting, writing.

Each of us remembers that turning point in our school life when a passionate teacher took us to see this film or encouraged us to read that book, and perhaps instilled the seeds of a vocation in us. But in the end, my screenplay never reached fruition. So when I came across Julie Maroh's graphic novel, the story of absolute love between two women which at the same time was about a young woman becoming a schoolteacher, I saw how I could link these two projects.

Q: Vocation is a strong theme for the two lead characters in your film: painting for one, teaching for the other.

Abdellatif Kechiche: I find this notion of vocation entirely legitimate and honorable, and all the more so since these are anonymous, selfless vocations. Neither is about trying to secure the recognition of others. I'm full of admiration for teachers who are deeply engaged with the progress of their students. It becomes part of their lives, the thing that gives them satisfaction.

Q: Your film is first and foremost a love story between two women.

Abdellatif Kechiche: Telling a love story between two women means working with two actresses to the fullest; this kind of work excites me deeply and it's becoming more and more important in my film career.

I have asked myself, what was it about this story from the graphic novel that was most inspiring, what was the spark? The illustrated panels showing naked bodies? It's possible. In the end, I don't really know the precise motivations.

Q: How did you choose your actresses, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos?

Abdellatif Kechiche: First, I met Léa Seydoux for the role of Emma. She shared her character's beauty, voice, intelligence, and freedom. But what was decisive during our meeting was her take on society: she's very much tuned in to the world around her. She possesses a real social awareness, she has a real engagement with the world, very similar to my own. I realized too how great an extent, as I spent a whole year with her between the time she was chosen for the role and the end of shooting.

I also thought there was something that could be described as quite 'Arabic' about Léa, something of an Arabic soul. She told me later she has Arabic half-brothers, which I didn't know. Léa has a way of going through life fully aware of what's happening. It's also a way of accepting life's vicissitudes. It has something to do with nomadism, wandering and with melancholy, and what we call 'mektoub'. Léa is tinged with all this, with this way of going through the world.

Q: And Adèle Exarchopoulos?

Abdellatif Kechiche: We organized a huge casting session and I chose Adèle the minute I saw her. I had taken her for lunch at a brasserie. She ordered a lemon tart and when I saw the way she ate it I thought: ''It's her!''

She was very much ''within her senses'', her way of moving her mouth, of chewing. Her mouth was a very important element in this film; in fact, both characters' mouths were decisive and for very human reasons. They provoke all sorts of feelings and sensations. Something in a face touches us: a nose, a mouth, whatever. For me, this is the beginning of everything...

Q: Why did you decide to change the name of one of the characters from Clémentine to Adèle?

Abdellatif Kechiche: Clémentine became Adèle because I wanted to keep the name of my actress. It didn't bother her. I think it even helped her merge with her character and I with her. It's also a matter of sound: Adèle, Emma, Léa are all light, ethereal names.

Of course, it's subjective. And then there's the fact that Adèle means 'justice' in Arabic, which I liked a lot.

Q: '[Social] justice' is an important concept with regard to all your films. Here, is it conveyed by a vision of the two different classes to which the characters belong?

Abdellatif Kechiche: It is indeed one of the recurring themes in my films, and has become almost an obsession: where is the social difference? Perhaps it's a finger on the pulse of a world to which I feel I belong, the class to which Adèle also belongs - the working class.

Emma belongs to an elite class: intellectual, artistic. Each of my heroines is defined by her social class. The difficulties they have with their relationship, that which causes them to break up and ultimately what the film is about, is their class differences since it generates a difference in their personal aspirations. It's not at all their homosexuality, which would be more or less tolerated, or understood, by the world around them.

Q: The sex scenes are essential to explain the powerful love between your two heroines. How did you approach them?

Abdellatif Kechiche: What I was trying to do when we were shooting these scenes was to film what I found beautiful. So we shot them like paintings, like sculptures. We spent a lot of time lighting them to ensure they would look beautiful; after, the innate choreography of the loving bodies took care of the rest, very naturally. They had to be made aesthetically beautiful while keeping the sexual dimension. We tried many different things; we worked hard. We talked a lot but in the end discussions led nowhere. You talk a lot on set but ultimately what you say doesn't matter that much because it's so intellectualized, whereas the reality is more intuitive.

Q: The theme of romantic loneliness follows the theme of love.

Abdellatif Kechiche: The theme of breaking up, the emptiness you can feel, the loneliness you experience when you're no longer loved, the bereavement you go through; everyone has known this. Everyone feels it, and no one can explain the pain it can create, but what interests me is that despite the pain, life goes on and what must be accomplished goes on. For me, that's why Adèle's character is heroic. She takes it all upon herself and continues to fulfill that for which she was destined.

Q: The loneliness triggered by heartache leads to courage, a theme that also seems to interest you in this film.

Abdellatif Kechiche: I greatly admire the character of Adèle: this free woman, courageous, devoted and strong. Adèle is devastated by her sorrow but doesn't once let it show in her work as a schoolteacher. She copes. Whenever I see courage like this in someone, it troubles me. Personally, I don't feel courageous, but I hold on to the idea. I often see it in young women, this strength, this self-affirmation. It reminded me - without my wanting to compare myself to him in any way - of Marivaux, and in particular of ''La vie de Marianne,'' with its orphan heroine so determined and full of courage in the face of hardship. There is a kinship with Adèle.

Q: Your cinematic style is also noticeable, a real endeavor to have the acting as natural as possible. How do you achieve this?

Abdellatif Kechiche: It is important that what is conveyed by images should be natural, and even though there's always fabrication, it must be as little as possible. It's a process of seeing how close you can get to ''the truth'' of a character, of trying to get rid of the acting, while knowing you never really quite get rid of it.

Q: This is even more pronounced in the group scenes where the exchanges between the characters seem improvised. Is there any improvisation involved?

Abdellatif Kechiche: In these group sequences, the text, the lines, are very precisely written. They exist but I try - I don't feel I have quite succeeded yet - not to have a predefined rhythm. I try to find the rhythm while we are shooting since I have difficulty with rhythm in screenplays, even regarding the plot structure. When I'm on set I need to break free of that principle, the principle of the screenplay that must be respected at all cost. I prefer to move towards others with my lines, to be open to something else, and not get stuck on what is written. So when it comes to these kinds of scenes, everything is open. Lines disappear and the writing continues during shooting. I feel very comfortable with these scenes. They are constantly being re-created to get the actors to react to each other. That amuses me.

Q: Finally, the film is completed. What has it given you?

Abdellatif Kechiche: It didn't give me any answers. On the contrary, it has multiplied my questions and uncertainties about the feminine principle: the principle of life, of hope, of mystery. I have the feeling that perhaps one day I will find an answer.

Q: Is that the reason for the film's subtitle ''Chapters 1 and 2''?

Abdellatif Kechiche: Chapters 1 and 2 because I don't yet know the other chapters. I'd really like Adèle to tell me what happens next.

Q: Is Adèle your Antoine Doinel? [Truffaut's hero and alter ego played by Jean-Pierre Léaud in several of his films]

Abdellatif Kechiche: Antoine Doinel? I admit it has crossed my mind.

Blue Is the Warmest Color Movie Details 🎥

Directed by

Abdellatif Kechiche

Writing Credits

Abdellatif Kechiche and Ghalia Lacroix (Scenario, Adaptation and Dialogue)

Julie Maroh (Adapted from: the comic book ''Le Bleu est une couleur chaude'' by)

Starring

Adèle Exarchopoulos

Léa Seydoux

Salim Kechiouche

Jérémie Laheurte

Catherine Salée

Aurélien Recoing

Anne Loiret

Benoît Pilot

Alma Jodorowsky

Baya Rehaz

Karim Saidi

Benjamin Siksou

Mona Walravens

Sandor Funtek

Fanny Maurin

Maelys Cabezon

Samir Bella

Tom Hurier

Manon Piette

Quentin Médrinal

Peter Assogbavi

Wisdom Ayanou

Philippe Potier

Virginie Morgny

Stéphane Mercoyrol

Lucie Bibal

Marilyne Chanaud

Camille Rutherford

Michael Skal

Sandrine Paraire

Justine Nissart

Flavie De Murat

Vincent Gaeta

Elizabeth Craig

Aurelie Lemanceau

Audrey Deswarte

Cinematography by

Sofian El Fani

Categories: Golden Globes, Golden Globe Nominee, EEBAFTAs, BAFTA Award Nominee, EFA, European Film Award Nominee

Genres: Drama, Romance

Countries: France, Belgium, Spain

Long Titles:

Blue Is the Warmest Color - Adèle: Chapters 1 & 2

La vie d'Adèle - Chapitre 1 et 2

Blue Is the Warmest Color Official Trailer

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