Tag Archives: Blue is the Warmest Color

Outtakes

Countdown: 2013’s Bounty of Foreign Films

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The Academy did a nice job this year in honoring foreign language films. Each candidate was wonderful, and we were especially pleased to see The Hunt and The Broken Circle Breakdown get attention. But the fact is, there were so many exceptional foreign language titles released this year, a lot of really wonderful movies didn’t get the nod. And that’s too bad, because without the Academy stamp, they went largely unnoticed in theaters. So, we decided to honor them ourselves. Please enjoy our list of the best foreign language films that did not get an Oscar nomination this year.

1. Gloria

If there’s one thing the films on our list have in common, it’s the strength of their female leads. Nowhere is this more the case than with the Chilean import Gloria. Paulina Garcia owns the title role with a performance that is raw emotion in action. With nary a false note, Garcia takes us on whirlwind coming-of-middle-age tale that never ceases to surprise.

2. Blue is the Warmest Color

Moving at its own pace, the French film packs an emotional wallop as it follows young Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) through her first affair of the heart. Anchored by Exarchopoulos’s powerhouse performance, and her touching chemistry with co-star Lea Seydoux, Blue is a beautifully human, wildly compelling love story.

3. The Past

Available today on DVD is a poignantly complicated, beautifully told tale of family dysfunction and the constant presence of our past. Blessed with unflinching performances – particularly from a magnificent Berenice Bejo – the wonderfully textured The Past keeps your attention as its mystery slowly unravels before your eyes.

4. Beyond the Hills

A Romanian story of forbidden love, progress and superstition, Beyond the Hills offers an understated and unhurried picture that leaves you shaken. A tale of survival and a displaced generation’s quest for security, the film makes for a beautiful examination of the weird, counter-productive, even dangerous relationship between primitive and modern Romania.

5. A Touch of Sin

That same tug of progress against a backdrop of old world creates the dehumanizing and corrupt environment for Zhangke Jia’s A Touch of Sin. The film dips a toe in four interweaving stories of individuals torn by the too-rapid cultural shift in China. Amid bullet and arterial spray, four beautifully developed characters struggle against their own bleak futures.

 

 

For Your Queue

Two Valentine Romances for Your Queue

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The controversial love story Blue is the Warmest Color releases to DVD today. Whatever your reservations or curiosity, the film is worth the attention it’s received by virtue of Adele Exarchopoulos’s powerhouse performance, as well as the expertly crafted, gorgeously filmed tale of the lilting heartache of first love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4bLY6PqW6A

 

Pair this with the underseen indie from 2011, Like Crazy. With another exceptional central performance from a new leading lady (Felicity Jones), the film swoons through the dizzying story of young and impetuous, not to mention impatient, love. It’s also worth noting an early and different role for Jennifer Lawrence as the fall-back girlfriend, the easy Plan B. How’s that for playing against type?

Outtakes

Oscar Countdown: Snubs Galore

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The Oscar nominations always cause a stir, what with the Academy’s glaring myopia when it comes to certain films. This year, the snubs were fewer and less harsh than in years past (like that year they totally ignored three of the best films of the year in Drive, Take Shelter and Young Adult, and failed to nominate the year’s best lead actress performances). We may never get over 2011.

Still, as always, there are some very curious omissions. Here we run down our 5 biggest gripes.

1. Inside Llewyn Davis

The magnificent Coen brothers’ immersive character study set in the unforgiving winter of the Greenwich Village folk scene garnered no love for its outstanding lead performance or its pristine screenplay or its rich and textured direction or even its music! That’s a lot of snubs for one film. It would certainly have been tough to find room for the wondrous Oscar Isaac in a leading actor field more crowded than most, and though the Coens are perpetual competitors for best director (by Oscar’s standards or anyone else’s), who would we bump this year? Scorsese? That’s a hard choice.

When it comes to original screenplay, we may have dumped Dallas Buyers Club in favor of Llewyn. There’s no question that we would have given it the best picture nod over Philomena.

 

2. Stories We Tell

The Academy had their heads up their asses with this one. In fact, there are a number of documentaries better suited to the award than this lineup suggests, but Sarah Polley’s deceptively complicated, brave and clever film cries out for recognition. Not only among the best documentaries of the year but one of the very best films overall, we would certainly have knocked Dirty Wars from the list in favor of Polley’s film. Truth be told, the only film in the category more deserving is The Act of Killing, so we’d have been fine with kicking any of the others to the curb to make room.

 

3. Her

The most imaginative and lovely film of 2013 went without acknowledgment in acting and directing, which is sinful. Our first order of business would be to get Scarlett Johansson a best actress nomination, even though the studio pushed her for supporting. Let’s be honest, regardless of the fact that she’s never onscreen, she plays one of two lovers in a love story. She’s the lead. And in a brilliant voice-only effort, she easily deserves Sandra Bullock’s spot. (In fact, we’d pick Johansson over Bullock, Streep or even Dench this year.)

Joaquin Phoenix should have edged out Leo (though we loved Leo’s work, it’s just a very tight race this year!). Director is as tight as actor, and while Alexander Payne and Martin Scorsese are 1) geniuses and 2) nominated for outstanding work this year, we’d have given one of their places to Spike Jonze for crafting a beautiful love story set in an unerringly crafted near-future, and doing so without a hint of cynicism or derivation.

 

4. Blue Is the Warmest Color

Apparently France couldn’t get off its cheese eating ass to get the film released in time for Oscar consideration, which is an absolute tragedy. The film should, by all accounts, boast two nominations, one for Best Foreign Language Film and another for Best Actress. The fact that Adele Exarchopoulos’s career-defining turn in this romantic drama will go unacknowledged is a crime.

 

5. And the Rest

We’d rather see Julie Louis-Dreyfus (Enough Said) for Best Actress than Meryl Streep. We know that sounds like heresy, but her performance in August: Osage County is so hyperbolic that it’s more exaggeration than acting. True, the weak direction of A: OC is most likely to blame, but the end result just doesn’t measure up.

We would also have given either Daniel Bruhl (Rush) or James Gandolfini (Enough Said) the nod over Jonah Hill for Best Supporting Actor.

 

For more on our Oscar picks, listen to George’s stint on the Sunny 95 (WSNY Columbus, OH) morning show.

 

Outtakes, Slider

Countdown: Best Films of 2013

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10. Blue is the Warmest Color

The engrossing and immersive romantic drama may be best known for its NC-17 rating, but the beauty and heartbreak in this loose narrative make it one of the best films of 2013. Adele Exarchopoulos provides among the strongest performances onscreen this year in a love story that is as emotionally explicit as it is sexually frank.

9. Stories We Tell

Sarah Polley proves her mettle as a documentarian with a private story that becomes universal, entertaining and genuinely moving. Through a profoundly personal investigation, Polley looks at the validity of those comfortable truths that live in every family, and it’s all clever, fascinating, funny stuff. Polley has quickly become a filmmaker you cannot ignore, and it is a testament to her own storytelling skill that even as she turns her focus inward, you can’t help but look at your own world in a different way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytq4VZ2Nyxg

 

8. The Wolf of Wall Street

Director Martin Scorcese’s three hour showcase of unchecked hedonism is a terrifically frenzied, wickedly funny ride. Leonardo DiCaprio is electric as Jordan Belfort, the real life Wall Street wizard who made millions before the Feds brought him down for rampant securities fraud. This is no hand-wringing reflection on the wages of sin, just a swaggering, appropriately superficial and completely entertaining lesson in the American dream.

7. Nebraska

The great Alexander Payne exceeds admittedly high expectations with this gracefully restrained father/son journey. The Oscar favorite will no doubt pull in a nomination for its lead, an unforgettable Bruce Dern, but the entire ensemble – June Squibb as Dern’s spitfire of a wife, in particular – beautifully convey the spite, regret, hilarity and insanity of family. Wistful and rambunctious, the film packs a dramatic punch but still leaves you smiling.

6. Gravity

Alfonso Cuaron redefines SciFi with a jaw-dropping interstellar adventure – undoubtedly this year’s most surprisingly tense action flick. He untethers a novice astronaut in outer space, and his audience with her, in the most intimate and epic journey of the year. His stunning directorial achievement reminds us of why people started making movies in the first place.

5. Her

Though it won’t hit many theaters until January, this film is too magnificent to be relegated to the category of afterthought. Spike Jonze has written and directed this year’s most poignant love story, cast it impeccably and set it just far enough into the future to let breathe. The eternally underappreciated Joaquin Phoenix breaks your heart as the lonesome lover in a world that encourages isolation, while Scarlett Johannson – in her second excellent turn this year, following Don Jon – delivers an award worthy performance with just her voice. It’s a beautiful, imaginative, relevant image of love in the modern world.

4. Inside Llewyn Davis

The Brothers Coen offer just another nearly flawless film, this time immersing us in the tribulations of a struggling musician in the 1961 Greenwich Village folk scene. Boasting a beautifully nuanced lead performance from Oscar Isaac and populated with hilarious and touching supporting turns, the film is the brothers’ most impeccably crafted character study. It’s also another great exploration of the artistic connections possible between cinema and music, reminding us again of that Coen genius.

3. The Act of Killing

Those responsible for exterminating more than a million Indonesians during the 1965 government overthrow re-enact their savagery for Joshua Oppenheimer’s camera in the most surreal and riveting documentary of this year, or perhaps any other. You simply cannot believe what you are seeing. The film is absolutely not what you expect it to be, regardless of what those expectations may be. It is essential viewing.

2. American Hustle

With a dream ensemble, wickedly sharp writing and an explosive pace, director David O. Russell gives us a con movie that explodes with heart and humor. Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper erupt while Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner anchor a very human, impossibly captivating comedy/drama.

1. 12 Years a Slave

Intimate storytelling and flawless acting come together to eliminate the distance of time and create a powerful, visceral, unforgettable cinematic and human experience. Director Steve McQueen has created a film that makes all others set during the shameful American history of slavery seem almost precious. His film is a profound and brutal experience, and an awe-inspiring feat of moviemaking. There is no close second in a list of the best films of 2013.

New In Theaters, Slider

Unforgettably Explicit

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by George Wolf

 

Make no mistake, though the sex depicted in Blue Is the Warmest Color (La vie d’Adele) is explicit enough to earn an NC-17 rating, it is the way the film is emotionally explicit that makes it one of the very best of the year.

The focus is Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos), a French teenager nearing the end of high school who loves literature and has designs on a future teaching career. Her blasé interest in a new boyfriend is forgotten when she passes the blue-haired, twenty-something Emma (Lea Seydoux) on a city street. Instantly captivated, Adele is left confused by her new feelings, and by the newfound pleasure that her fantasies of Emma can bring.

In adapting the source comic book by Julie Maroh, director/co-writer Abdellatif Kechiche has created a completely engrossing drama, one that totally immerses you in the romantic arc between Adele and Emma. Kechiche doesn’t follow a by-the-numbers narrative, choosing instead to present sketches of the the two women’s lives – both together and apart.

Kechiche’s camera lingers on nearly every moment, and though this results in a full three hour running time, the film, almost miraculously, never feels self-indulgent. Rather, the pace seems a necessity, as Exarchopoulos and Seydoux slowly allow us to develop a bond with their characters that is deep enough to share in their joys and heartaches.

The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and though this has historically been a prize for directors exclusively, the jury made an exception this year, choosing to also honor the two lead actors. Indeed, their performances go beyond fearless, reaching a point of emotion so raw you begin to feel self-conscious for intruding.

Exarchopoulos, in particular, is mesmerizing. She invites you into Adele’s journey for fulfillment, never once allowing a crack in her authenticity. If there has been a better performance on screen this year, I haven’t seen it.

A film this sexually frank will inevitably attract attention, especially when a male director is presenting girl-on-girl sex scenes with this much intensity and duration (one nearly ten minutes long). It is a fact that is not lost on Kechiche.

Throughout the film, lessons from Adele’s literature studies are deftly woven into the story, with one character remarking how seldom art ponders female sexual pleasure. While this is clearly not the case here, Kechiche gives the sex scenes (including one between Adele and her early boyfriend) a messy, natural quality, devoid of swelling music or rampant romanticism.

Lust is a major part of Adele and Emma’s relationship, and though Kechiche certainly presents it in a powerful way, he doesn’t employ empty titillation in the process.

Look beyond the distractions, and Blue Is the Warmest Color becomes a love story that nearly explodes with a timely urgency, one told with such depth, humor and humanity it simply cannot be ignored.

 

 

Verdict-4-5-Stars