Movie Review: The Institute

The Institute
Directed by: Spencer McCall.

The Institute is a documentary about something called an “Alternate Reality Game”. Players saw flyers hung up on telephone poles around San Francisco (and already you know the type of people the game attracted – people who actually read the flyers put on telephone poles), and then call the number on them. They are given an address of the Jejune Institute in the financial district. When they go to the building, they are directed to a room – the room has TV that gives them instructions, one of them being not to open the drawer in the desk, which obviously means everyone opens the drawer in the desk, which gives them an induction card, and a set of instructions on how to get out of the building and what to do next. Eventually, they will be directed to listen to a radio station, which gives other strange instructions. Players will be sent on a wild goose chase – sometimes through sewers with other gamers they meet. Sometimes, they have to make phone calls from a payphone, and the person on the other end of the line will tell them to dance – at which point, a musician shows up and starts playing music, and eventually, the player will be given something by a man dressed as a Sasquatch, who danced right along with them.

What is the purpose of the game? Even after watching the movie, I couldn’t begin to tell you. The intricate plot of the game involves a feud between the Jeujune Institute and another organization – led by a guru with the improbable name of Octavio Coleman, Esquire. Or maybe, Octavio Coleman was the head of the Jeujune Institute, and the other organization was the evil one. I don’t quite remember – the whole thing gets confusing, with so much new age psychobabble going on – and talk of inventions suppressed, and geniuses in need to rescue. Most of the participants seem to be in on the joke from the beginning – they know it’s all just an elaborate game, and they enjoy playing it. It adds some needed surrealism into their regular lives. Some take it far too seriously, and may even think it’s real. When the game ends, the reaction of the gamers is mixed, with those who are let down by the “secrets”, those who simply shrug their shoulders and move on, and those who view it as a life changing experience.

The movie will probably play better to the type of people who would sign up to play the game in the first place. There is something refreshingly strange about the whole thing, and the film at its best has some wonderfully surreal moments (I imagine David Lynch watching the movie, and swearing at himself for not including dancing sasquatches in Inland Empire). But ultimately, I found watching The Institute an extremely frustrating experience. Director Spencer McCall really wants to string the audience along for the entire running time, just like the creators of the “game” in question did to its participants, albeit for a much shorter time (the game went on for months). If you like being jerked around by a movie like this, or the game sounds like something you would enjoy, than perhaps you’ll like The Institute more than I did. For me though, I would have preferred a more critical look into the game itself – which apparently is part of a larger movement that some have embraced, and some see as dangerous. During the runtime of the game in the movie, some think it all just may be a front for a cult.

When The Institute was over, I didn’t feel like I knew much more about its subject than when the film began – which seeing as I knew nothing about it when the movie began, was problematic for me. You probably could make a good documentary about this strange, strange “game” – but it would require a director with more probing questions and critical insight and less of a need to string the audience along on a quest that ultimately leads nowhere.

My Answer to the Latest Criticwire Survey: Most Used Simpsons Quote

Q: What's your go-to quote from The Simpsons -- not your favorite necessarily, but the one you're most likely to use on a daily basis?

I can only choose one? If I had to narrow it down to just one, then I’ll go with Super Nintendo (I mean Superintendent) Chalmers line after temporary Principal Ned thanks the lord over the P.A. system “That sounded like a prayer. A prayer in a public school. God has no place within these walls, just like facts have no place within organized religion”. Makes me laugh every time, and being an atheist married to a Catholic School Teacher (who teaches religion, naturally) just makes it all the better.

What else? “Dental Plan”. “Lisa needs braces” “Lousy Smarch weather”, “Barney’s movie had heart, but Football in the groin had a football in the groin”, “I was saying Boo-urns”, “Five days? But I’m angry now”, “Everything’s coming up Millhouse!”, “My eyes – the goggles do nothing!”, “I eated the purple berries. They tasted like burning”, “I’m cold and there are wolves after me”, “Me Fail English? That’s unpossible”, “I bent my wookie”, “Worst. Episode. Ever.” “It’s a perfectly cromulent word”, “Alcohol, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems”, “You're a liar, honey, A dirty rotten liar.”, “I’m kind of like Jesus, but not in a sacrilegious way”, “Let the bears pay the bear tax, I pay the Homer tax”, “Tramamampoline!”, “It was a pornography store. I was buying pornography”, “Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!”, “Up and at them!”, “You’ve crossed the line from regular villainy into cartoonish super-villainy.”, “Dig up, stupid”, “I noticed that he was wearing sneakers. For… sneaking.” “The doll is trying to kill me, and the toaster’s been laughing at me”.

Yeah, so basically, I quote The Simpsons a lot.

EDIT: After speaking to my wife after posting this, she pointed out one I completely forgot about, for some reason, even though it is a running joke between the two of us as we often ask each other about the "pretzel monies". Here is the full quote from Fat Tony: "I'm afraid I must insist. You see, my wife, she has been most vocal on the subject of the pretzel monies. "Where's the money? "When are you going to get the money?" "Why aren't you getting the money now?" And so on."

 

Movie Review: Blue Caprice

Blue Caprice
Directed by: Alexandre Moors.
Written by: R.F.I. Porto.
Starring: Isaiah Washington (John), Tequan Richmond (Lee), Tim Blake Nelson (Ray), Joey Lauren Adams (Jamie), Leo Fitzpatrick (Arms Dealer), Al Sapienza (Detective Harper), Cassandra Freeman (Angela), April Yvette Thompson (Lee's Mother).

Making a movie based on a real life case – a case that saw multiple people killed – is a very tricky balancing act. If you show too much, you’re simply making an exploitation film – using an infamous case to draw interest in your film, and let the audience feel like insiders. On the other hand, if you don’t show enough, you risk downplaying the severity of the crimes themselves – and not capturing the horrific nature of the crimes themselves. Alexandre Moors’ Blue Caprice is a movie that mostly gets the balancing act right. It is about the infamous D.C. Snipers John Muhammad and Lee Malvo, who for a few weeks in the summer of 2002 terrorized Washington and its suburbs, by gunning down more than a dozen people – seemingly at random. No one had any idea who was committing the murders, why – and no one knew if they were safe or not. The snipers attacked people in parking lots, or while pumping gas. While not terrorists in the traditional sense, they certainly terrorized Washington – making everyone question whether or not there was anywhere they could be safe.

Blue Caprice opens with a montage – clips of real 911 phone calls during the killers’ spree, and news footage, in an effort to get you to see right from the start the terror the two men you will spend the majority of the movie with inspired. When the film finally gets to the spree itself – more than an hour into a 90 minute movie – Moors employs a similar tactic once again – not showing the pair actually carry out one of their killings, but rather using real calls and footage to show their aftermath. I’m not quite sure this tactic goes far enough in showing the terror they caused – but it comes close.

The movie opens in Antigua, as Lee (Tequan Richmond) watches his mother leave him. Where ever his father is, he’s not in the picture, and his mother tells him she has to go away – if he wants to eat, she has to work – and in order to work, she has to leave. It’s only in this opening scene we see her at all – she leaves, and never comes back. He sees John (Isaiah Washington) with his three kids on vacation, and starts following them around. John seems to love his kids – he would never just pack up and leave them like his mother just did to Lee. Eventually, John will invite Lee to stay with them. They are on a “secret” vacation that they cannot tell their mom about. When they pack up to return to America – Lee goes with them.

Most of the movie will be just John and Lee. John loses his kids once he returns to the States (in scenes left off-screen) – he doesn’t even know where they are. The pair end up staying with gun nut Ray (Tim Blake Nelson), his wife Jamie (Joey Lauren Adams), and their infant. Ray considers John to be a friend – but almost from the beginning, we see what friendship means to John, which isn’t much. John is a user and a manipulator – he gets people to do whatever he wants them to do. With a damaged kid like Lee – not wanting to lose yet another parental figure – this is almost too easy.

Washington’s performance in Blue Caprice is the best work he has ever done – and a reminder of what a good actor he can be. After being fired from Grey’s Anatomy for using a homophobic slur, he has had difficulty finding work. It’s been easy to forget that this is the same actor who has delivered excellent performances in films like Spike Lee’s Clockers (1995) and Get on the Bus (1996) and Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight (1998). Here, he does an excellent job playing John – he never makes him over the top evil, but rather does an impressively subtle job playing him. He does seem like a good father at the beginning of the movie – and a genuinely nice guy. Who else would take a lost kid like Lee in, when he has nowhere else to go? But even in these early scenes, there is something not quite right about him – something a little off. It’s not much – an offhand remark, or a look in the eye, that shows John’s darkness. Gradually, this darkness takes over – a chilling monologue in a grocery store (that we’ll hear twice), shows just how deranged this man really is. In some ways, Richmond’s role is even more difficult – he stays silent much of the time. He is basically a good kid, who gradually gets sucked into John’s demented worldview. I’m not sure he ever actually buys into what John is selling – but he wants so desperately to have someone in his life – and no one other than John seems to care – that he willingly goes along with everything.

Blue Caprice is not an exploitive movie. There have been a rash on movies about real life serial killers over the past 10 years – mostly cheap, direct-to-video movies that exploit the real life crimes of killers to make a quick buck. Blue Caprice isn’t that kind of movie. It’s a thoughtful movie and a disturbing one. Does it show why either John or Lee commit the crimes they do? Not really. It shows them as damaged men – John angry at the world for the loss of his kids, and Lee desperate for parental guidance – but how they settled on what they finally did is one of those things that will probably remain unknowable. Like Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2005), loosely based on Columbine, Blue Caprice doesn’t really seek to explain everything about the crimes these two men committed – which is what makes the film even more disturbing than it otherwise would be. As audience members, we are conditioned by movies to expect reasons for everything – a show like Criminal Minds deals with serial killers every week, and explains away their behavior in the course of an hour. But real life is messier than that. And this what Blue Caprice shows. It is an excellent debut film for Moors – and a comeback role for Washington. A disturbing film that asks more questions than it can possibly answer.

Movie Review: Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt
Directed by: Margarethe von Trotta.
Written by: Pam Katz & Margarethe von Trotta.
Starring: Barbara Sukowa (Hannah Arendt), Axel Milberg (Heinrich Blücher), Janet McTeer (Mary McCarthy), Julia Jentsch (Lotte Köhler), Ulrich Noethen (Hans Jonas), Michael Degen (Kurt Blumenfeld), Nicholas Woodeson (William Shawn), Victoria Trauttmansdorff (Charlotte Beradt), Klaus Pohl (Martin Heidegger), Friederike Becht (Young Hannah Arendt).
 

Hannah Arendt is more a film of ideas – and their power – than anything else. In the film Barbara Sukowa plays famed German-Jew writer/political thinker/philosopher (although she hated that word)/university professor Hannah Arendt, who in the early 1960s provoked heated debate, and was condemned from all sides for her series of articles in the New Yorker than she turned into the book Eichmann in Jerusalem” about Adolf Eichmann – the Nazi war criminal responsible for overseeing the trains that took Jews to the Concentration Camps where they were murdered en masse. After the war, Eichmann escaped Germany on a fake passport and made his way to Argentina – where eventually the Mossad found him, kidnapped him and took him back to Israel to stand trial.

Arendt questioned the legality of kidnapping Eichmann (which is true), but not the morality of Israel’s standing to put Nazi criminals on trial. She also criticized the trial as merely a show trial – an excuse for Israel to put victims of the Holocaust on the stand with the whole world watching, whether or not they had anything to do with Eichmann’s guilt or innocence. Ultimately however, Arendt does concur with the verdict against Eichmann – and the death sentence that came along with it. That wasn’t what got her in trouble.

What got her in trouble were two separate ideas. The first being her famous phrase “the banality of evil” to describe Eichmann. To Arendt, she had to find a way to reconcile the “mediocrity of the man” with the extraordinary evil of his crimes, ultimately concluding that Eichmann’s greatest crime was his refusal to think for himself – and when he refused to do that, he gave up his humanity, and allowed unspeakable atrocities to occur. This came too close to an apology for Nazis for many, who preferred to see Eichmann and his kind as inhuman monsters. What got her into even more trouble however was her contention that the role that Jewish leaders played in the Holocaust helped increase the number of Jews who were killed by the Nazis. It was part of the trial – and is fairly well established now – that there were quite a few Jewish leaders, who for various reasons, collaborated with the Nazis. But back in 1960 – especially in the intellectual community in New York, which had many Jewish people – who either escaped with their lives, or knew people who did not – these ideas were incendiary. To many, Arendt was making an apology for the Nazis, and blaming the Jews for their own destruction.

The film based on these events is at its best when it sticks to Arendt’s ideas – and the debate that they stirred. Sukowa delivers a fierce, stubborn, intelligent performance as Arendt – a woman who is fully convinced she is right, and for most of the runtime of the movie refuses to defend herself or apologize. She said everything she wanted to say in her writing. The University where she teaches tries to force her out – but she refuses to go, and has the support of her students. Israel sends agents to try and convince her to stop publication of the book – and tell her it will never be published in Israel (apparently it was eventually translated into Hebrew and published there – but that was only recently). She loses friends over her book – and is called ugly names by many, and has her past dragged out (seen in awkward flashbacks) when she was the student (and according to the movie, the lover) of Martin Heidegger, the German intellectual, who joined the Nazi party in 1933.

Arendt’s stirring final speech – in front of her students – where she finally agrees to defend and explain herself and what she has written is the highlight of the movie. It will undoubtedly remind many of a courtroom summation – a grand, impassioned defense of her ideas and ideals.

The film is less stirring in many of the more personal moments in the film. I did enjoy the unlikely friendship between Arendt and author Mary McCarthy - played by the wonderful Janet McTeer – who has an excellent scene where she defends Arendt. But the portrait of Arendt’s marriage to poet Heinrich Blücher (Axel Milberg) is less compelling – if only because it takes us away from what is so compelling in the rest of the movie. The film also takes quite a while to get going – the first half hour or so seems to be endless parties and discussions or little consequence. Once Arendt gets to Jerusalem, and starts covering the Eichmann trial (the movie, wisely, decides to use archival footage of instead of casting an actor to play him – like Clooney did with McCarthy in Good Night and Good Luck), the movie becomes far more compelling.

To some, Hannah Arendt will be an overly talky movie – there is little in the movie other than talk to be sure. But I found the film fascinating. Co-written and directed by Margarethe von Trotta, Hannah Arendt finds an interesting way to tell what seems like a completely un-cinematic story. This is a movie about intelligent people engaged in intellectual debate – and while that may sound boring, the result is far from dull.

Movie Review: How to Make Money Selling Drugs

How to Make Money Selling Drugs
Directed by: Matthew Cooke.
 

How to Make Money Selling Drugs is a documentary that basically argues that America should makes drugs legal – and wraps the argument up in a glittering package that takes the form of an infomercial, or a motivational speaker, showing just how easy it is to make money selling illegal drugs. I may well agree with some of the points made in the documentary – but I still don’t think very much of the movie, which is cynical in the extreme for the first hour, and then gets downright preachy in the final half hour. Stick with Eugene Jarecki’s excellent The House I Live In if you want to see a documentary about the War on Drugs that actually takes what its subject seriously.

The film’s opening scenes are all flash – presenting the different levels of drug dealing as levels in a videogame, going from street dealer all the way up to kingpin. The movie has interviews with many past, current and future drug dealers, who let you in on their trade secrets. This goes on for nearly an hour, and is overwhelming with all the information it throws at you – some of which I found hard to believe, but since I don’t have the stats in front of me, perhaps I’ll just leave that alone. But those facts are buried underneath all the flash and pomp of the films relentless, headache inducing style. The film never really slows down – never really lets anyone talk for very long, before it dives headlong into its next section, it’s next barrage of facts and figures, it’s next celebrity interview.

After an hour of this cynicism wrapped up in a shiny package, the movie turns preachy – with the basic style of the first hour all but abandoned, so the narrator can tell us a history lesson about the War on Drugs – from Nixon until today – with yet more facts and figures shouted at the audience. The whole movie was basically too overwhelming – it never settles down to make its points, it just dives headlong from one point to the next.

Do some of the arguments the movie is making make sense? Yes, they do. The War on Drugs is hugely expensive, and not very effective, and the laws on the books are almost blatantly racist – punishing blacks far more heavily for their transgressions as whites. And yet, while I agree with at least some of the movie, I could never really get into it. It’s all too overwhelming and scattershot to be effective – not to mention glib and cynical.

Movie Review: Turbo

Turbo
Directed by: David Soren.
Written by: Darren Lemke & Robert D. Siegel & David Soren.
Starring: Ryan Reynolds (Turbo), Paul Giamatti (Chet), Michael Peña (Tito), Samuel L. Jackson  (Whiplash), Luis Guzmán (Angelo), Bill Hader (Guy Gagné), Snoop Dogg (Smoove Move), Maya Rudolph (Burn), Ben Schwartz (Skidmark), Richard Jenkins (Bobby), Ken Jeong (Kim Ly), Michelle Rodriguez (Paz).

My daughter was mesmerized by the first 45 minutes or so of Turbo. Mind you, she’s two, and reacts with the type of joy only a two year old can have every time the Bubble Guppies comes on TV, so what does she know? Still, watching her drawn into a movie for the first time made the experience of watching Turbo more enjoyable than it otherwise would be. Turbo is by no means a bad movie – it is bright, colorful, fast moving, has good voice and I was never bored by the film. But I was also never drawn into the film either – perhaps I was too distracted by my daughter, but to me Turbo, like most animated films this year, is just another animated film that’s kind of there.

The story is about a snail named Theo who dreams of racing. He stays up all night watching old VHS tapes (how retro!) of Indy Car racing – where his hero is Guy Gagne – a seemingly humble man, who never the less always wins. Theo’s brother is Chet, and he’s a worried – he wants Theo to give up his dreams, and settle into a dreary life in the garden, picking and sorting tomatoes like the rest of the snails. Then, through a series of events too bizarre to recount, Theo gains super speed – he no longer has to go through life at a snail’s pace, but no he can race with the fastest cars on the planet. He is discovered by Tito, who along with his brother Angelo runs a Taco stand and food truck (because, I guess have them sell sombreros would be too on the nose). Tito, like Theo, is a dreamer – Angelo, like Chet, wants him to settle down into a dreary life. Then, through another strange series of events, Tito decides to take Theo – now nicknamed Turbo – to the Indy 500, and somehow, convinces everyone to allow Turbo to race against, among others, Guy Gagne. Turbo is accompanied on his journey by Chet, and a ragtag group of wisecracking snails.

Yes, the plot of Turbo is ridiculous – even by the standards of children’s animation – but it works in an old fashioned kind of way. Turbo at heart is an underdog story about the little snail that won’t give up, even though no one believes in him. It’s not a new story, but it’s survived so long because it’s an effective one.

The voice work is consistently good in Turbo – if only because the film stars precisely the actor you would expect in every vocal role, which means you don’t really have to work on developing the characters, the come wholly formed. Young hotshot – Ryan Reynolds, nervous, neurotic brother – Paul Giamatti, cool snail – Samuel L. Jackson, snail who sounds like he’s high on pot the whole movie – Snoop Dogg, nice Mexican – Michael Pena, seemingly mean Mexican who softens – Greendale’s own Luis Guzman, tough Mexican woman – Michelle Rodriguez, Asian – Ken Jeong (the fact that it’s a woman apparently doesn’t matter), guy who can do a phony French accent because we obviously wrote the role for Sacha Baron Cohen based on Talladega Nights but he said no – Bill Hader. You get the idea. One of the bad things about the now two decade old trend of casting famous actor in every prominent vocal role in animation is that really talented voice artists are now relegated strictly to TV – one of the good things is that instantly recognizable voices can act as a storytelling shorthand to tell us everything we need to know about the characters – and Turbo uses that to its advantage.

The film is well animated – even if I do wish it didn’t insist on being quite so blindingly colorful and fast moving at it’s ever moment – but based on the fact my daughter’s interest waned in the few moments the movie did slow down, but was instantly drawn back in when things sped up again, perhaps the filmmakers know their audience better than I do. Then again, I feel the need to point out once again that my daughter is two. If you have kids, that Turbo will keep them entertained. I don’t know if it will become a title they watch over and over again like kids love to do, but it will keep them distracted for 90 minutes, and it won’t drive you nuts as a parent (at least the first time through). Turbo does what it sets out to do – which is to be an enjoyable kid’s movie, so if you have kids, by all means, see it. But if you don’t, I can’t think of a reason why you need to see it.

Movie Review: Blue is the Warmest Color

Blue is the Warmest Color
Directed by: Abdellatif Kechiche.
Written by: Abdellatif Kechiche & Ghalia Lacroix based on the graphic novel by Julie Maroh.
Starring: Adèle Exarchopoulos (Adèle), Léa Seydoux (Emma), Salim Kechiouche (Samir), Aurélien Recoing (Le père d'Adèle), Catherine Salée (La mère d'Adèle), Benjamin Siksou (Antoine), Mona Walravens (Lise), Alma Jodorowsky (Béatrice), Jérémie Laheurte (Thomas), Anne Loiret (La mère d'Emma), Benoît Pilot (Le beau-père d'Emma), Sandor Funtek (Valentin), Fanny Maurin (Amélie), Maelys Cabezon (Laetitia).
 

Blue is the Warmest Color has become one of the most talked about films of the year for three reasons – first, because it won the Palme D’or, which is arguably the most prestigious prize in film, second because of the nasty feud between director Abdellatif Kechiche and star Lea Seydoux (and to a lesser extent, Adele Exarchopoulos) – which doesn’t interest me very much, so this will be the last time I mention it – and third because it features graphic, extended lesbian sex scenes. Coming out of Cannes, all I read about were those sex scenes, which is odd, because the movie is three hours long, and I would say less than 30 minutes (probably significantly less, although I didn’t bring a stop watch) is taken up with those scenes. Yes, they are memorable and erotic – and yes, like pretty much all movie sex scenes, I don’t think they are particularly realistic, but I don’t really think they have to be. Most of the movie is a coming of age film – a film about a sexually confused young woman in the process of discovering who she is – emotionally and sexually, a process that the movie makes clear hasn’t ended when the movie does. The movie has some problems – but overall I found it a perceptive, insightful and emotionally charged story, that is brilliantly acted by the two leads.

The movie stars Adele Exarchopoulos as Adele – a junior in high school, who hangs out with the popular crowd of beautiful, but bitchy, teenage girls. Based on their talk, they are all sexually experienced – but Adele remains mainly quiet on the subject, even when they tease her about a boy a year older – Thomas (Jeremie Laheurte) who is clearly making eyes at her. She dates Thomas for a while – even sleeps with him in the movie’s first sex scene – but the spark just isn’t there. It is there when she locks eyes with Emma (Lea Seydoux) – first on the street, and later when she follows her to a lesbian bar. The attraction is immediate and strong – all their interactions are charged with sexual energy, well before the now infamous sex scenes. The movie charts their relationship over a number of years – first love blossoming, and then, inevitably, turning sour, even if that love and attraction is still there.

Exarchopoulos is wonderful in the movie. She plays a young girl who really doesn’t know who she is – she is scattered and messy, like the beautiful mess of hair she cannot seem to do anything with it, except let it cascade over her face. She is a girl of big appetites – Kechiche delights in watching her eat, which she does more often than Brad Pitt does in any of his films. She is a confused girl, who sometimes acts impulsively, and does things that end up hurting others, yet she never loses our empathy – she doesn’t mean to hurt others, but she behaves like a teenage girl, which she is, and that sometimes happens. Seydoux is equally great as the older Emma – unlike Adele, she has no confusion over who she is, or what she wants. She is an artist, and completely comfortable in her own skin – and projects the kind of confidence that Adele admires – although she can be thoughtless as well. There is a reason that for the first time ever the Steven Spielberg led Cannes Jury insisted these two actresses share the Palme D’or with the director – they are two of the very best performances of the year.

The movie itself is not quite as good as they are. At three hours, it is a little too long – especially in the third hour, which is tougher to watch because watching things fall apart is more painful that watching love bloom. Every scene in the movie – including the sex scenes – is overlong, which I think is kind of the point, but also does begin to drag a little as it continues. When Kechiche says there is a longer cut of the movie, I have no trouble believing him – there are plot threads that are left dangling, like what became of all of Adele’s high school friends the movie spends so much time with in the first hour, establishes some of their homophobia, and then abandons, and whether or not Adele ever “comes out” to her family – there are twin scenes, where each girl brings the other to her parents for dinner – Emma’s parents know, and Adele’s clearly do not as the women lie to them, yet Adele clearly lives with Emma later. Do they think they’re just roommates? Perhaps there are cut scenes that illuminate these issues – and perhaps Kechiche was right to cut them, but they stood out to me (and there are a few others).

I guess I have to say something about the sex scenes in the movie – and the charge that they represent the male gaze on behalf of Kechiche. I find it impossible to refute the charge that Kechiche’s camera is clearly in love with Exarchopoulos – her face, seen in close-up a lot, is always loving framed, and there are numerous shots where Kechiche equally lovingly frames her ass (it is, it must be said, a very nice ass). The sex scenes are extended and graphic, watching these two beautiful actresses in the throes of ecstasy. Yes, to a certain extent, the male gaze is on full display in Blue is the Warmest Color. Yet the sex scenes do actually serve a larger purpose in the movie – especially Adele’s disappointing experience to Thomas and that extended, passionate first scene with Emma – that establish better than any dialogue could the difference between Adele’s two lovers, and how she feels about them. Besides, is it inherently wrong to make a movie about sex that is actually erotic and sexy? Do movie sex scenes ever portray what actual sex is really like, or do they all somewhat exaggerate? Kechiche and his camera may feel a degree of lust towards Exarchopoulos, but given the context of the movie, it’s feels appropriate, not exploitive.

Blue is the Warmest Color is not quite the masterpiece its biggest supporters believe it to be – but I also don’t feel it’s as perverted as its detractors think it is. At its heart, it’s a wonderful story of a young woman discovering who she is – and where her place in the world is. Even with the sex scenes and the NC-17 rating in the States, I think the movie is appropriate for teenagers – in fact, I think they’ll get more out of the film than anyone else will. Many of them will undoubtedly see a little of themselves in Adele.