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Written by Bea, disscussed by all

Blue Is the Warmest Colour

overall: The film follows Adèle, a French teenager who discovers desire and freedom, an aspiring painter Emma enters her life. It charts their relationship from Adèle's high school years to her early adult life and career as a school teacher.

Much of the controversy was about claims of poor working conditions on set alleged by the crew and the lead actresses, and also the film's raw depiction of sexuality.

Plot:

Adèle is an 15-year-old high-school student. She passes an older woman with short blue hair in the streets one day and is instantly attracted. She sleeps with a boy from school but is dissatisfied and ends it. After constantly thinking about the blue-haired woman and later kissing one of her female friends, Adèle becomes troubled about her sexual identity. Adele is taken to a gay bar where she meets Emma again, and they become friends. Adèle's friends suspect her of being a lesbian and separate themselves from her. Adèle and Emma grow closer and kiss at a picnic, they later have sex and begin a relationship. Emma's artsy family is welcoming to Adèle, however Adele tells her conservative, working-class parents that Emma is her tutor for philosophy class. Their relationship grows tense as they have little in common. Out of loneliness, Adèle sleeps with a male colleague. Emma learns about the cheating and furiously breaks up with Adèle. Three years later, the two meet at a restaurant. Adèle has not moved on: she is still deeply in love with Emma.

Sexuality

Lesbian sexuality is one of the strongest themes of the film, as the narrative deals mainly with Adele's exploration of her identity in this context. However, the film's treatment of lesbian sexuality has been questioned by academics, due to its being directed from a straight, male perspective. One critic has suggested that the film is not a lesbian film, highlighting the exploration of bisexuality of the character Adele.

About the movie

Director and screenwriter Abdellatif Kechiche developed the premise for Blue Is the Warmest Colour while directing his second feature film. The film, originally planned to be shot in two and a half months, was shot in five months, from March to August 2012 with a budget of €4 million. Shooting took place in Lille as well as Roubaix and Liévin.

Significance of the colour blue

Blue Is the Warmest Colour is also filled with visual symbolism. The colour blue is used extensively throughout the film—from the lighting in the gay club Adèle visits, to the dress she wears in the last scene and most notably, in Emma's hair and eyes. For Adèle, blue represents emotional intensity, curiosity, love, and sadness.

LGBT and feminist response

The film received LGBT and feminist critical comment for the perceived dominance of the male gaze and lack of female gaze, with some reviewers calling it a "patriarchal gaze."

Similarities

Adèle's conservative, working-class family engaging in discussion over comparatively banal subjects to Emma's more open-minded, middle-class family, who focus their discussion primarily on more existential matters: art, career, life and passion. Perhaps one of the most significant differences between Adèle's and Emma's families is that Emma's is aware of their lesbian relationship, while Adèle's conservative parents are under the impression the women are just friends.

Our opening sequence is quite similar to this film with the set of conservative parents and them not fully agreeing with their daughters sexuality, however in ours there are 2 sets of parents who don't agree with the sexuality as it heightens the intensity as the love is more forbidden. Further, the 2 girls start as friends and then become more, which is also what our movie would show, and the opening sequence is showing them first taking the step as more than friends. The main difference of our pieces is that ours is slightly more darker with the exorcism, but there is betrayal in the fact that Adele cheats. Hopefully with our representation of lesbianism it's more accurate and captures the rawness of the sexuality, rather than the stereotypical blue hair.

Exorcism Research- written by Mia, disscussed by all

For the exorcism research, the first movie scene I looked at was called "The Exorcist". The scene I watched (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpyg94OzHK0) was completely different to the idea of my groups exorcism scene. The reason it is not similar is because of supernatural element. In this movie scene, the girl rises up into the air off of her bed, this is something we are not considering to do as we want to keep our exorcism realistic. We also don't have the budget to create a supernatural scene. The girl in "The Exorcist" is shown to be truly possessed, Our girl is not possessed however her parent view her sexuality as a sin. Something my group and I will take from this scene is the behaviour of the Priest. The priest behaviour is unpredictable and crazy as he frees the demon from the girls body. Our priest will behave in the same manner. The flicking of the water onto the girls body seen in this scene is something we want to remake and include into our scene.

The next movie I looked is called the seventh day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJThAgic45Q). I looked at this movie because it is another movie with exorcism regarding them going wrong. Specifically, in this movie it depicts an exorcism gone wrong, as the child burns to death. I chose this movie to show the intensity and dangers around an exorcism, as if not done properly it can have really big effects, such as death. Also, it shows that exorcism are not always the right way of conversion, because one of the 'fathers' is actual containing the demonic entity. The part that we are taking from this is the preparation of the exorcism, as we are trying to make it very realistic and really get the nervousness of the dangerous tasks. Also, in the first scene the boy's parents are in the room holding him down, we are using this because it makes it clear that this was the parents idea and they are a big part of the danger.