AfterBlue is the Warmest Colour won Cannes last May, its two lead actresses Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos described the shoot as 'horrible' and said they felt like 'prostitutes'. Only hours

So rarely does a film perfectly encapsulate the epic journey of a single relationship. The fevered anticipation of meeting someone interesting; the enveloping ravenous lust that takes over when everything is so exciting and so new; the slow-building love and admiration for another person; the inevitable mistakes that lead to impending despair; and the heartbreaking regret of what could have been. 'Blue is the Warmest Color,' is adapted from Julie March's graphic novel "Blue Angel." In the film, Adele Adele Exarchopoulos is a young, confused French teen. Like many teens she struggles to find an identity within her group of friends. At the beginning she's unsure of herself around her friends. She tries to fit in, sidling up to the fringe of the group, laughing with them, smoking with them, but never really interacting with them. Adele's life is all surface deep up to this point. She's searching for something more, but this is all she's got to work with. Until, one day, she spots a blue-haired beauty on the street. Adele is mesmerized. The girl with blue hair is Emma Lea Seydoux. It's easy to tell that Emma is a lesbian, but up until this point we aren't sure what Adele is. She's attracted immediately to Emma, but it takes her a while to come to grips with her own sexuality. What transpires is a beautiful journey of one girl trying to figure out who she is, and another girl who finds love in all the wrong places. What's so intoxicating about 'Blue is the Warmest Color' is watching Adele grow from a teenager to a woman seamlessly. The movie covers a wide expanse of time – how much we're not really sure – and Adele grows right along with it. With minimal makeup and costume changes, Adele appears to age as the movie presses on toward its lengthy 179 minute runtime. Exarchopoulos shows some astonishing acting skill by making us believe that she's really growing and evolving from a girl to a woman. It's a slow, but deliberate and rewarding process. Much has been made of 'Blue is the Warmest Color's graphic sex scenes. The movie earned an NC-17 rating, and rightly so. The scenes are graphic, but they play a part in the overall story. Here's a girl who has been so reserved for so long, she's finally ready to let loose. Then she finds this mysterious, sexy stranger and everything falls into place. It's a fever dream of skin and passion. Sadly, because of these scenes the movie has been written off by some as "that lesbian movie." In the age of the Internet those scenes, which amount to only a fraction of the film, have garnered the most comment. Are we all not human? Haven't we, at one time or another felt that kind of unbridled passion? Maybe we haven't, but others have. Where some have derided these scenes as pornographic, or over the top, I see two women who have finally found each other and they want to express their love for one another. Sex, seems like a great outlet for that, don't you think? I can't remember the last time I saw such an effective, and engrossing, coming-of-age story. It felt real, and unfiltered. A deep and intimate look at a single tumultuous relationship between two people. The dangers of unchecked desire, and how easy it is to hurt the ones you care about. 'Blue is the Warmest Color' was one of my favorite films from last year. Blu-ray Vital Disc Stats Criterion has released 'Blue is the Warmest Color' on a single 50GB Blu-ray Disc. Housed in Criterion's trademark clear case, this release comes with a spine number of 695, and a foldout. The foldout contains an essay entitled "Feeling Blue" by B. Ruby Rich, editor of Film Quarterly. There's also the standard notes about the cast, the transfer, and production notes.

review film blue is the warmest color