Summary:
Adele, a young schoolteacher in France, has a life altering awakening when she meets Emma, an artist with blue hair.
My Thoughts:
A lot of times when people look at controversial films, they whittle them down to talk only about the scenes that make them controversial. When “Saw” first came out, all I remember knowing about that film was that a guy had to cut his leg off at the end. I still haven’t seen “Basic Instinct”, but I know it’s famous for the scene where Sharon Stone crosses her leg. This film, in much the same way, is famous for its gratuitous and graphic lesbian sex scenes, and I wont lie to you: the sex scenes are graphic, they are lengthy, and I’m sure had I watched this with anyone else, it might’ve made viewing this film a little uncomfortable. But while sex is a prominent topic in this movie, it is not the only thing this movie speaks to; it’s also about self-discovery and self-love, finding yourself and growing up through making mistakes and just taking chances. This is a movie that fully embraces the messiness of love and it understands the difficulties of learning how to accept who you are as a person.
Yes, there are some very lengthy sex scenes; yes, they are quite explicit; but, yes, they also serve a purpose. If you take issue with sexual content in films, then don’t watch this film; you wont enjoy it. But if you can look past the nudity to see that what the director is trying to portray is not pornographic, but a raw and real look at a very passionate and powerful relationship. The sex doesn’t glorify lust; it exudes love with every brush of skin and sharp gasp for air.
“I have infinite tenderness for you.”
I did a little bit of reading about the way this film was made after I watched it, and as usual when I do follow up research, I found myself even more impressed with the film itself. Kechiche sounds like he’s a director that might be difficult to work with. From what I can tell, both Lea Seydoux (“The Lobster”) and Adele Exarchpoulos (“Racer and the Jailbird”) said they wouldn’t work with him again, primarily because of how intensive he can be on set. His style includes a lot of improvisation. He directs his actors and has them use the script as a basic outline for how the scenes go, but then he has the actors forget the lines and just come up with the dialogue on their own. They run the scenes until they find lines that fit the emotion of the sequence perfectly and then use those takes. Mike Leigh does the same thing in a lot of his films, and every time I see this kind of direction done, I tend to feel as if the dialogue has a more natural cadence and the scenes an easier rhythm. That makes sense: it’s the actor’s words. Running the scenes over and over again can be intense, but it can also help to bring forth the real meaning of each scene. This film is full of scenes that feel as if they’ve been utterly perfected; little character quirks be flushed out, subtext can be honed, and the intimacy of each moment can really be cherished.
Kechiche also used this improvisation technique during the sex scenes, and its here that this film garnered a bit of its controversy. IMDb reports that one of the sex scenes took ten days to film. TEN DAYS ON ONE SEX SCENE? To put that in perspective, the entirety of “Blair Witch Project” was shot in eight days… Someone else shot an entire hour and a half long movie and then still had two days to spare in the time that it took Kechiche to shoot a twelve-minute sex scene. That is absolutely insane, and there were rumors and comments that the treatment of the actresses bordered on abuse. I don’t know if that’s true- I wasn’t on the set when this movie was being filmed. What I do know is that the scene they created was intimate and beautiful without feeling voyeuristic. It feels not as if we’re spying on these women but as if we’re with them in this perfect moment that they’re crafting together. The nudity lends itself to feel honest, not pornographic.
It’s sad because even as I look at this review I know that most of what I wrote about is the sex scenes. It’s as I said above: controversial films are often whittled down to their most controversial scenes. I even tried to avoid doing that and I still ended up focusing on those scenes- it’s hard not to. No matter what, when people think about this movie, I can almost guarantee the first thing that will come to mind is the controversy surrounding those scenes. The sex scenes in this movie probably don’t even take up a tenth of its three hour run time. There is SO MUCH MORE that happens in this movie. This movie is a beautiful, brutal, honest, naked look at love and all of its forms. It’s a love story with so much intimacy that it’s almost frightening.
Verdict:
I loved this movie, but its not one that I’d go out of my way to recommend to people. This movie is profound and wonderful and it says so much about love, but it does so in a way that is super explicit, and that alone would hold me from suggesting this to too many people. I think the right audience will fall head over heels in love with this film- I certainly did- but I also think it’s a film is a little too explicit for me to push on someone. The choice is up to you if you want to see this film.
It’s messy, graphic, and intense, but more than anything else it’s honest about the nature of love.
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