Vanessa McMahon

If love had a color would it be blue?

Directed by Tunisian born French native Abdellatif Kechiche, ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’ ("La Vie d’ Adèle", 2013) is an enterprising story that reminds us of the nature of true love. Despite the awe-inspiring explicit lesbian lovemaking scenes that even had the French gasping for air in the theater, this is not merely a story about a gay couple and their passionate bedroom affair; rather, it’s about the nature of true love transcending color, age, time and gender.

When we first see ‘Adèle' (Adèle Exarchopoulos), she is a pimpled high-school student courted by a Brad Pitt-lookalike she has nothing in common with; he looks good but bores her to tears. Life is empty for Adèle - when she eats she stuffs her face, while screwing her boyfriend she does so hurried for it to end, while sleeping she sleeps without tranquility or grace. But one day a blue light enters her life and transforms her world topsy-turvy. When Adèle meets ‘Emma’ (Léa Seydoux’)- a stunning young woman with blue hair and an inner glow- she is utterly transformed. It is love at first sight between these two as they connect on a sacred level.

While Adele normally dates boys, she finds the love of her life in Emma, the blue-haired siren, her muse and her reason for being. It is Emma who teaches Adèle how to see the beauty in life and to taste it, filling her life up with soul and meaning where before there was only a hungry chasm. With Emma, Adèle learns how to eat slow and savor each bite, how to make intense fulfilling love, how to sleep at peace.

One of their many meeting places is a garden bench under a tree on a sunny day. In one scene, the sun’s rays hit Emma’s hair and her eyes hold a look of purity and innocence that only love can impregnate. Adèle admires Emma in the sunlight, her blue hair almost shining like an ethereal halo. Could this meeting place of theirs be the Garden of Eden and their cemented urban life the hell and judging society at large, The Fall? In ancient Greece, men procreated with their subjugated women (of course in the Greek patriarch women were not allowed to develop the Self and were kept home) but found higher love with their male companions. Today, a polar opposite has occurred where many women fail to find a higher soul-inspiring love with their male partners and so have turned to each other.

Adèle and Emma discuss literature, philosophy, art and life as a whole; they bear their souls to one another until they become so entwined it seems they live in a crystal ball that no one and nothing can touch or ruin. But as all precious earthly things are ephemeral, everything can and does break. While Adèle is torn between the will to please her social surroundings and her transcendent love for Emma, she makes choices that will test her love for Emma, and her understanding of life with all its gains and losses. ‘La Vie d’Adèle’ is just the kind of film that breaks all boundaries and walks down a forested path few filmmakers would ever dare to venture; and yet, it has triumphed with audiences and taken home the 66th Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or.

Written by Vanessa McMahon

View clip from film here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M62Ru0CV-yE