Teenager Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is still going to school when one day she sees art student Emma (Léa Seydoux) at a cross-walk. Unsure of her life, her emotions and her sexual identity does Adèle begin to go look for that vision with blue hair.
The ever present magnetism does its work and these two young women start a passionate and deeply intimate love affair which tests their own emotional depths and even reality itself.
By all accounts, Abdel Kechiche's adaption of "Le Bleu est Une Couleur Chaude" is too long. It has a number of scenes, including the very explicit sex scenes, who manage to convey a level of intimacy that is one of the rarest things in cinema these days, but they loose some of their power because the camera lingers on for too long.
This important critique aside, "La vie d'Adèle" is an engrossing, breathtakingly acted love story that removes any kind of gender questions and presents the unfiltered beating heart of young love.
It elevates those moments of pure joy and profound emotional understanding to a universal level, that makes this experience at times too much to bear. Not because of what is shown but how familiar all these emotions are to so many people on this planet.
"La vie d'Adèle" gives to the lucky few the assurance that if your life is sparred by the heart-break of your first truly idealistic love and you manage to take said love into the world of everyday relationship or marriage you have one of the rarest gifts in life. To the many, who had to concede their first true love to the higher forces that life presents, Kechiche and his two lead actresses provide a very touching mirror into those moments where reality tips to the side of momentary bliss only to pull the rug right out from under us.
And as it is with the exquisite pain of a broken heart, you don't forget a movie like this.
The ever present magnetism does its work and these two young women start a passionate and deeply intimate love affair which tests their own emotional depths and even reality itself.
By all accounts, Abdel Kechiche's adaption of "Le Bleu est Une Couleur Chaude" is too long. It has a number of scenes, including the very explicit sex scenes, who manage to convey a level of intimacy that is one of the rarest things in cinema these days, but they loose some of their power because the camera lingers on for too long.
This important critique aside, "La vie d'Adèle" is an engrossing, breathtakingly acted love story that removes any kind of gender questions and presents the unfiltered beating heart of young love.
It elevates those moments of pure joy and profound emotional understanding to a universal level, that makes this experience at times too much to bear. Not because of what is shown but how familiar all these emotions are to so many people on this planet.
"La vie d'Adèle" gives to the lucky few the assurance that if your life is sparred by the heart-break of your first truly idealistic love and you manage to take said love into the world of everyday relationship or marriage you have one of the rarest gifts in life. To the many, who had to concede their first true love to the higher forces that life presents, Kechiche and his two lead actresses provide a very touching mirror into those moments where reality tips to the side of momentary bliss only to pull the rug right out from under us.
And as it is with the exquisite pain of a broken heart, you don't forget a movie like this.