This is a follow-up to a review of Blue is The Warmest Colour (2013)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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28 November
This is a follow-up to a review of Blue is The Warmest Colour (2013)
* Full of spoilers about Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) - linked from the review here *
* Introduction to Adèle’s family and school life (Pasteur, Lille)
* (We learn that she is ‘a junior’, but her age is hard to place, and the French terminology does not mean very much)
* Her female friends urge her that Thomas is interested in her
* When she meets him on the bus, they talk, and he turns out to be ‘a senior’, reading science
* They have a date, but his advances in the cinema seem to cause her problems
* He confronts her with avoiding him, and they sleep together (not very convincingly, she claims that it was good)
* Alongside all this, she has passed Emma in the street (‘love at first sight’, as one of the teachers twice refers to ?), and then has a confused masturbatory dream in which Emma and others feature, from which she awakes aroused and disturbed
* At this stage, it remains open whether Emma and she had been lovers before, and seeing each other in the street has sparked something off
* Valentin, a male friend, has seemed understanding, and reassured her about her appearance (be behaves as if, contradicted by the family set-up, he might be an older sibling)
* Later, after upset regarding telling Thomas that she is breaking up with him, Valentin takes her out of school, and they end up, that evening, at a gay bar
* Adèle tires of watching same-sex kissing and the dancing, and wanders out, and into another bar
* There, she is the subject of interest of various women, Emma (who is on a balcony) and she see each other, and Emma, calling her Sophie, claims to be her cousin : it is soon apparent that they do not, in fact, know each other
* Again, Adèle ends up leaving, but Emma waits at the school gates, and they go off together
* Valentin indiscreetly (though innocently) reveals where Adèle and he went, and she is then taunted for associating with a ‘dyke’ (Emma) and accused of ‘eating pussy’
* She then meets Emma again and does so – full, intimate, unhesitating sex-acts from someone who has never slept with a woman before
* Unclear where (need not be Lille), but a LGBT march, where Emma and Adèle are prominent marchers and kiss publicly
Significant other events :
* Introduction of Adèle to Emma’s parents (who accept her sexuality) – the parents question the solid nature of Adèle’s intention of doing a master’s course and going into teaching, as against taking more of a risk on the job market
* Seemingly on her return from this visit, a surprise eighteenth-birthday celebration (so we learn her age)
* Likewise with Adèle’s parents (but Emma goes along with saying that she helps Adèle with her philosophy, and even that she has a boyfriend) – her parents stress the precarious nature of being an artist, and Emma claims to be a graphic artist, too, and to get work from it
* Huge jump in time (unless it is teaching practice) to Adèle taking primary classes, and a male teacher urging her so come drinking after work
* Big party for Emma’s art career, where she meets Lise, and Adèle talks to and dances with Joachim, eyeing Emma and Lise suspiciously – pitting Egon Schiele against Gustav Klimt, etc., does not convince as the height of intellectual conversation
* The male teacher drops Adèle off, and Emma, who is watching and sees them kiss passionately, confronts Adèle, who admits sleeping with him when lonely (because Lise was helping Emma with her art, which makes Adèle suspicious)
* Emma calling Adèle ashamed of her and a whore and a slut, given that, later, Emma has a relationship with Lise, makes one wonder whether Adèle’s supicions of Emma were right, and Emma was just covering falling out of love with Adèle (as she had been with a girl for two years when she slept with Adèle)
And so on...
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
