Movie Review: Blue is the Warmest Color: de manger la chatte

For a gay chick flick, this is truly one of the finest heterosexual guy movies ever made.  Great acting, great directing, terrific photography and a good story line that holds together as a modern Greek Love Tragedy.It is also a sensitive Lesbians-in-Love movie that works on many levels in spite of the possibly unfounded portrayal of almost all lesbians as excellent artists or nurturing earth mother types and the totally insensitive portrayal of gay males as the only males who truly appreciate women.

WARNING: 

1.They spend a lot of time eating spaghetti.In fact, Adele’s parents may eat nothing but spaghetti with a red sauce and when Emma, her slightly older lover, takes her home to meet Mom and Dad, spaghetti with red sauce is the main course as well.  It could be some sort of French thing.

2.Adele, the protagonist, spends a lot of time teaching in class teaching kindergarten kids or first graders.  The students, each about 5 or 6 years of age, are wearing false eyelashes or heavy eyeliner.

3.Adele’s high school chums, mean, evil harridans, all accuse her of mangeant la chatte—as though there is something wrong with this.

4.There are lots of close up of Adele sleeping, Adele sleeping and breathing, and of both women standing in relatively close proximity to the other having an orgasm.

It begins in a French high school literature class.  Class members are reading passages from a story by Pierre de Marivaux, a famous French author that most people have never heard of, and the instructor explains the significance:  boy and girl strangers pass, mere glances are exchanged, the flames of passion are ignited, and later the two come together in an intensely passionate grappling.  The scene ends with question:  “Love at first sight?”

The protagonist, Adele, in this case a photogenic young woman with peaches and cream complexion and healthy physique, is a confused virgin.  She thinks she has had a similar spark-across-the-gap experience with a handsome young man because their eyes met in passing, and he keeps glancing over his shoulder at her, but she feels no passion.  She arranges a liaison with him and they have sexual intercourse.  He may be a virgin, too, but the story line is vague on that and it’s not really important. 

The scene begins with her on top. There she is, mounted atop a charging thoroughbred, hips moving to and fro with the rhythm of the galloping steed—you can almost hear Johnny Cash singing “Night Riders in the Sky” in the background—then, without losing a stride, she reaches behind her rounded buttocks and seems to tuck something in its place.  But, there is no explanation for this—nothing to place it in perspective.  Is this a “reinsert-and-shorten-stroke-moment” or is it a “this-thing-will-be-out-of-the-way-if-I-stuff-it-here moment?”  Then, mere seconds later, he rolls her over, mounts that buckin’ bronco and rides like the wind, complete with tastefully filmed scenes of his clenching buttocks thrusting mightily, to the eventual climax.  Her legs are wrapped around him and she is posting along quite nicely but her facial expression says she wishes she had brought something to read.

And, these are high school students?

While he may ride like the wind to the final butt cheek clinching climax, she doesn’t, and, like most women, perhaps, when it’s over, and he asks for a performance report, she tells him it was great.  But, then, like a true man, he puts his arm around her and falls asleep. 

The fact that he embraces her before he falls asleep seems to be a point in his favor.  It is evidence that he is caring, but it is also a subtle reminder that underscores the entire movie that no man can satisfy a woman like a real woman.

This is soon driven home in a scene in the park where she is sitting with him on a park bench and she explains to him that he just did not ring her bell.  The young man’s face clearly portrays confusion.  He looks like he is thinking, “What is she getting at?  She didn’t enjoy it as much as I did?  What is wrong with this picture?”  She was a touch more subtle and definitely easier on the male ego than my explanation and that may explain his confusion.

Then, it happens.  Adele is leaving the park and walking through a square and the future love object, Emma—a similarly photogenic young woman with blue hair—passes in the other direction with her arm around another.  Their eyes meet briefly, the spark jumps the gap, both young women steal glances over their shoulders and move on.

Later that night, safe in her bed, almost as an act of divine confirmation, Adele dreams of having sex with Emma and wakes up at the apex of a crescendoing orgasm scene.

Good stuff.

We don’t know much about Emma’s experiences with nocturnal female emissions but a short time later she is shown stalking Adele near the entrance of the French equivalent to high school that Adele attends. So, we know the spark jumped in both directions.  

Soon thereafter, they unite.They go barhopping through a jungle of loud gay bars.  Emma spends most of this time lighting cigarette after cigarette and looking at Adele out of the corner of her eye.  Adele is busy watching the other lesbians in the over filled bar lip locked in saliva-drenched tongue probing deep kisses. 

If one believes these portrayals to be representative of the Lesbian lifestyle, then one might reasonably believe that lesbians spend a lot of time swapping spit on a monumental scale.

This is followed by a confrontation, the next morning, in front of the school, when her harridan school chums accuse her of being a lesbian and of mangeant la chatte.  This was an ugly scene, but probably representative of ugly behavior everywhere.

Later, they do come together, and often, in one of the most spectacular sex scenes imaginable.  It was instructive as well as titillating.  Dynamite stuff, and, most likely, most men can learn a lot about technique from it.

Key Point:  If you are a dude, and you are looking for advanced techniques to satisfy your woman, this is the flick to watch.

The cinematography is supremely creative and stimulating.  In one exquisitely aesthetic scene, Emma is standing and Adele is kneeing before her.  The camera is filming from behind Emma, shooting below her smooth but clenching derrière and between her hairless and shapely with a peaches and cream complexion legs.  Adele is yodeling up her canyon and Emma is convulsing mightily and uncontrollably.In the struggle between her attempts to maintain contact with Adele’s lips and Adele’s attempts to breath, we briefly see Adele’s face with various fluids dripping down her chin.  In another scene, Adele is lying on her back, completely nude, with a cigarette hanging from her mouth, while the camera looks lengthwise from her feet towards her face, showing everything between—including her tonsils. 

This is a near perfect advertisement for full body waxing.

Later, we are shown the drawings and paintings that Emma created with the inspiration provided during these moments and they are truly motivating. 

As is apparently natural for Lesbians, Emma is an accomplished artist with a paintbrush.

Of course, some things aren’t meant to last forever and this wouldn’t be much of a tragedy if this love affair were not one of those things.  Emma, who is apparently enthralled with a pregnant old girl friend, stops having sex with Adele.  She works late and quite honestly admits that she doesn’t have the energy.

Adele feels unloved, unwanted, discarded and lonely and she still seems unsettled about her own sexuality.One of the first moments of doubt occurs in a scene where they are entertaining at home and a masculinely handsome young man of Arabic ancestry initiates a conversation with Adele.He is an aspiring actor and he has just recently returned from America where he portrayed an Arab terrorist in New York.  He was cast for the scene because of his Semitic good looks and the fact that he speaks Arabic.  He loves New York.  He tells her she would love New York.  She agrees, but she is soon joined by Emma and that love story does not blossom.

Adrift on an ocean of loneliness, like so many women who haven’t learned their lesson, she takes comfort in the arms and bed of a man.Well, maybe the arms and beds of a few men.

Emma, who has been seeing that pregnant old girlfriend on the side, sensing betrayal, sneaks around and observes Adele in flagrante delicto with a man of all things.

This of course, unlike having an “extra marital” affair with another woman—a pregnant woman, emblematic of the caring nature of true lesbians in this movie—is completely unforgivable.  Emma accuses Adele, to her face, of being orally promiscuous with a man—lord have mercy—and, then, returning to their shared abode and kissing her.  Being more honest than bright, Adele cops to it.

This is something the delicate love affair can’t survive and Emma kicks Adele out and lets her pregnant by a man girl friend move in.

Life goes on.  Adele is teaching kindergarten and, unseen, Emma is being artistically creative and leading a stable domestic life with her domestic partner. Girl friends child is born—it is a boy—and the years pass.  Emma and Adele are still friends, but nothing more. Then, the big break.The most important gallery in Paris decides to show Emma’s art. 

Adele makes the trip from where ever she is living to the gallery by train and walks from the train station to the show.  Inside, she wanders from piece to piece and eventually wanders to one of herself, naked, showing the full moule in exquisite detail.

While she is admiring the piece, the still handsome French-Arab stud muffin she had encountered at the years earlier dinner part, contacts her verbally and they expressed mild surprise at encountering each other at this show.

They speak briefly, looking deep into each other’s eyes.  What had seen been doing?  What had he been doing?  Is he still acting?  Is she single?  Is he single?  He is no longer acting and is selling real estate.  They both laugh at this tragic reality.  The scene smolders with hidden heat.And then, the moment is interrupted by an elderly homosexual male who wants to show stud muffin a piece.

Adele wanders around the gallery a short time and stud muffin keeps and eye on her.  When she exits through the front door, stud muffin breaks away from the old gentleman and heads through the crowd to stop her.

Once outside, she walks around the corner and heads off in the direction of the train station.

Stud muffin exits the gallery, looks up and down the street and runs off in the wrong direction.

Typical man.

And thus the movie comes to a tragic end with much love or potential love lost.

In spite of the tragic ending, this movie is a genuine guy flick worth watching.

I highly recommend it.