Cannes Film Festival – Official Competition
Producers of the upcoming film adaptation of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” I have found your director. Thank me later.
In the past three weeks since I’ve seen Abdellatif Kechiche’s “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” I have gone back and forth on whether I deem it to be pornography. What I can say without a doubt, however, is that it features the most graphic depictions of sexuality between any two people that I have ever seen on film. It takes that honor away from Steve McQueen’s 2011 masterpiece “Shame,” which used pornographic aesthetics to ironically point out just how little pleasure was present in the carnality occurring before our eyes.
Kechiche’s camera, whether voyeuristic or artistic, captures human sexuality between the timid young Adele (newcomer Adele Exarchopolous) and the nubile Emma (Lea Seydoux) at an extremely intimate level. On the one hand, it seems almost animalistic as we feel their every body movement, see the saliva drip, and hear their every moan. Yet at the same time, it’s also highly erotic. Kechiche seems more focused on capturing the act from every angle and less on the experience that Adele and Emma are having.
The story just stops as we are left to gaze at Adele and Emma entangling in a frenzied sexual embrace. Acting halts as well since the camera just cares about Exarchopolous and Seydoux’s extremities, not their faces. In addition, Kechiche’s segues into sensuality are so abrupt and unexpected that once the first scene occurs, it’s impossible not to be constantly wondering if the next edit will lead into intertwining limbs or passionate moans.
Marshall and the Movies 
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