Mademoiselle Bovary Likes Blue

“La Vie d’Adèle” (aka Blue is the Warmest Color)

Starring: Adèle Exarchopoulos, Léa Seydoux, Jeremie Laheurte, Catherine Salée, Aurélien Recoing, Sandor Funtek, Karim Saidi, Baya Rehaz, Aurelie Lemanceau

Director: Abdellatif Kechiche (FR, 2013)

“La Vie d’Adèle” brings porn to a new level of intellectualism and boredom. A remade Madame Bovary for the sophisticated bourgeois girl who finds boys, especially teen-agers, unsatisfactory. The movie starts with Adèle a high school student.

It is a coming-of-age story, Adèle’s, but mostly her coming story. I mean sexually. The movie has numerous graphic sex scenes which unmistakably prove that sex between two beautiful bodies, no matter their gender, is hot. And yes, the camera work is great.

Blue is the Warmest Color centers on Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos). I know it is a redundant observation if you read the French title (Adele’s Life), but not if you read the English translation, which mentions blue, and that is the color of Emma’s (Léa Seydoux) hair.

But let’s talk about its true merit. The movie is so slow that you could prepare dinner for two, eat it, have sex again, enjoy post-coital smoke, and continue watching it. I forgot, you could make a few phone calls too.

But why would you continue watching it? Because there is a lot to say:

There is something to say about the lower French middle class who hates French food and likes only spaghetti. This is Adèle’s family. The higher middle class, Emma’s family, stays away from carbs enjoying oysters, but being French, sneaks in some good wine.

Another serious thing the movie discusses is sex. Hot, and beautifully filmed. And it looked so real.

Finally, the intellectual part is worth the Netflex subscription, too. Madame Bovary, Emma Bovary, a doctor’s wife, sought love outside her square marital bed and got burnt, so to speak. She killed herself.  Adèle sought love outside her social and cultural milieu, and got burnt too: the upper class, exemplified by the blue-haired girl, Emma, breaks up the relationship and kicks Adèle out in the street in the middle of the night, though the bitch knew that Adèle has a teaching job to go to the next morning. Adèle is a teacher while Emma paints teachers.

The End.

The movie ends on the same note with one major difference. At Cannes, Spielberg found the movie really hot. He went for a threesome: the director and the two protagonists.

SOUR GRAPES

Mademoiselle Bovary Likes Blue