Blue Is the Warmest Color

Name: Blue Is the Warmest Color
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: October 25, 2013
Duration: 179 min
Rating: 88
Cast: Ad, Alma Jodorowsky, Anne Loiret, Aurélien Recoing, Benjamin Siksou

2013

METASCORE

Universal acclaim based on 51 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 390 Ratings

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7.8

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7.8	Your Score
7.8	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 390 Ratings

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Blue Is The Warmest Color (US)

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Movie Details & Credits

Sundance Selects | Release Date: October 25, 2013 | NC-17

Starring: Ad, Alma Jodorowsky, Anne Loiret, Aurélien Recoing, Benjamin Siksou, Beno, Catherine Salée, Jeremie Laheurte, Léa Seydoux, Mona Walravens, Salim Kechiouche, Sandor Funtek

Summary: Blue is the Warmest Color centers on a 15-year-old girl named Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) who is climbing to adulthood and dreams of experiencing her first love. A handsome male classmate falls for her, but an unsettling erotic reverie upsets the romance before it begins. Adèle imagines that the mysterious, blue-haired girl she encounteredBlue is the Warmest Color centers on a 15-year-old girl named Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) who is climbing to adulthood and dreams of experiencing her first love. A handsome male classmate falls for her, 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 pleasure. That blue-haired girl is a confident older art student named Emma (Léa Seydoux), who will soon enter Adèle's life for real, leading to an intense and complicated love story that spans a decade and is touchingly universal in its depiction. [IFC Films]… Expand

Director: Abdel Kechiche

Genre(s): Drama, Romance

Rating: NC-17

Runtime: 179 min

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Awards & Rankings

10	#10 Best Movie of 2013
98	#98 Most Discussed Movie of 2013
2	#2 Most Shared Movie of 2013

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

100

Stephanie Zacharek

Oct 22, 2013

Kechiche and his actresses explore the in-between—ecstasy, exploration, the comfort and eventual boredom of domesticity—and the aftermath, the painful shards of feeling we cling to after something has shattered. And they don't mess around when it comes to the ferocity of love, sex, or, God help us, the two combined. Read full review

100

Mick LaSalle

Oct 31, 2013

Make no mistake, Blue Is the Warmest Color constitutes a breakthrough, in addition to being the best film of 2013. Read full review

100

Guy Lodge

May 7, 2019

Nothing about the film’s coming-of-age narrative, nor the rise and fall of its core romance, is intrinsically new or daring, yet Kechiche’s freewheeling perspective on young desire is uncommon in its emotional maturity. Read full review

David Edelstein

Oct 21, 2013

The movie goes on for three hours without an emotional letup — it’s finally overwhelming. Read full review

Peter Rainer

Oct 25, 2013

Often remarkable and often exasperating. Read full review

The Guardian Peter Bradshaw

May 27, 2013

It's a long movie, and by the end you may well feel every bit as wrung out as the characters. But it is genuinely passionate film-making. Read full review

Steve Persall

Nov 7, 2013

Kechiche's doting on entwined limbs, thrusting pelvises and oral stimulation, all carefully posed and continued longer than necessary to get his point across, races beyond titillation to creepy voyeurism. Read full review

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User Reviews

LowbrowCinema

Nov 5, 2013

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR left me so astounded that I had to walk aimlessly for an hour to get over its gut wrenching examination of our ability to love and lose so profoundly. After nearly 2 hours and 20 minutes the film builds to a series of scenes that make you feel like your heart hasBLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR left me so astounded that I had to walk aimlessly for an hour to get over its gut wrenching examination of our ability to love and lose so profoundly. After nearly 2 hours and 20 minutes the film builds to a series of scenes that make you feel like your heart has been scraped by a knife, leaving only a battered shell of veins intact. Forget all the talk of explicit and long sex scenes, these just small bits of BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR, a very modern story of love and its power over all of us. Is it really possible to feel so profoundly? And can we possibly move on?… Expand

12 of 16 users found this helpful124

movielover1966

Aug 8, 2015

Absolutely amazing movie. This brings back memories of young love. Adele is breathtakingly beautiful in this movie. The emotion is raw and her innocence is real.

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

MarkAngel

Nov 16, 2013

The premise is not especially original nor inventive. Nevertheless, by the end of the third hour, La Vie d'Adele marvelously and bitter-sweetly becomes singular cinematic experience that feels profound in its essence. It avoids tedious detailing of events, people, circumstances, complexThe premise is not especially original nor inventive. Nevertheless, by the end of the third hour, La Vie d'Adele marvelously and bitter-sweetly becomes singular cinematic experience that feels profound in its essence. It avoids tedious detailing of events, people, circumstances, complex narratives or character studies. Instead, it focuses on simple and meaningful themes such as youth, self acceptance, love, sex, loneliness, lost and dealing with the sorrows of solitude. The juxtaposition between life and intimacy achieves greatness here.… Expand

4 of 6 users found this helpful42

ArchonMagazine

Sep 20, 2014

Seventeen year old Adele’s life is changed when she meets Emma, a sapphire haired university student, and her path changes from adrift high school student to a woman discovering herself and sexuality in Blue is the Warmest Color.

Beautiful and honest, Blue is the Warmest Color is aSeventeen year old Adele’s life is changed when she meets Emma, a sapphire haired university student, and her path changes from adrift high school student to a woman discovering herself and sexuality in Blue is the Warmest Color.

Beautiful and honest, Blue is the Warmest Color is a realistic love story. I find it quite hard to say what it is about without it sounding banal. Adele is a confused girl, unfulfilled in her life, trying to figure out what she desires. Then, girl meets girl, girl likes girl, girl falls for girl, and girl’s relationship with girl follows its destined course. In the meantime, girl comes to grips with her desire, sexuality and identity. But it is poignant, sweet, sad, unflinching,

The more naive and inexperienced of the two is Adele, played by Adele Exarchopoulos. She does a wonderful job of being both unsure and youthfully headstrong. I enjoyed her character being so blase about pretenses and frivolity in the superficial. She is hilarious to watch eat food, Adele ravenously devours meals as if her appetite for sustenance is insatiable. Emma, played by Lea Seydoux, is the slightly older college student who Adele befriends, at first as a confidante and mild mentor, but soon that friendship evolves. Emma is free-spirited and confident without being pretentious or judgmental and Seydoux’s character warrants Adele’s infatuation.

The film is raw, the sex scenes enthralling without being gratuitous and what you get essentially from Blue is the Warmest Color is a coming of age lesbian love story.

More reviews of recent releases can be found at our website.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

Mancunian2014

Jun 21, 2014

A mature movie for mature audiences. It realistically shows a young Adele coming to terms with her lesbian identity in a still rather homophobic French society. It also shows rather well how one cannot control who ones falls in love with and how one's first love can seem like the universe.A mature movie for mature audiences. It realistically shows a young Adele coming to terms with her lesbian identity in a still rather homophobic French society. It also shows rather well how one cannot control who ones falls in love with and how one's first love can seem like the universe. And moreover, Adele simply doesn't fall for or sleep with Emma right away. It grows to that point which is really how life works. Yet, their relationship doesn't work and rightly sends the message that cheating is detrimental in society where it is widely believed and glorified in the media that one's partner will do that.

My complaints with the film are how long it is (even though you don't feel that as much as you might) and how the long lesbian sex scene was, which essentially ended up being pornography. I wasn't the only theatre-goer who giggled with absurdity when it simply would not end! And not that I think one who watches porn is necessarily immoral; rather I think that the director shouldn't try to pass off what he'd produced in that scene as art. He did it push boundaries and make a name for himself in the end. But it's the filming technology and porn actor stand-ins that's becoming even more common in once taboo movies. This is really nothing revolutionary.… Expand

2 of 2 users found this helpful20

Ryo91

Apr 21, 2020

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. 3 Punktabzüge weil die beiden sich getrennt haben weil Adèle fremdgegangen ist was ich nicht gut fand.
2 Punktabzüge weil Emma Adèle nicht mehr beachtet hat.
> 5/10 *… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

TLHG

Dec 24, 2015

This is a movie that makes me wonder: "Why did anyone put money, time, and effort to make this movie?" Movies that make me think like this are not necessarily bad movies in terms of acting, directing etc, the way the through line unfolds etc... Movies that make me think like this are moviesThis is a movie that makes me wonder: "Why did anyone put money, time, and effort to make this movie?" Movies that make me think like this are not necessarily bad movies in terms of acting, directing etc, the way the through line unfolds etc... Movies that make me think like this are movies that are simply unnecessary. There's nothing happening in Blue is the Warmest Color. No twist, nothing extraordinary happens, the characters live in an ordinary context, there's nothing unique about the images or the music. So why should you take a few hours of the day to watch a movie that shows life exactly as it is? This movie is almost like a reality show about that friendly lesbian couple that you know from somewhere...… Expand

5 of 7 users found this helpful52

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