The Mise-en-Scene of Desire: Class and Sexuality in the Visual Field of Blue Is The Warmest Colour

In this essay I will be arguing that the film Blue is the Warmest Colour1 (from here on called Blue)

directed by Abdellatif Kechiche and released in 2013, is essentially a film about class, and more

specifically, will be arguing that this film critiques class and its relationship to sexuality through the

triangulation of power, object and orifice. Based on the Julie Maroh graphic novel Le Bleu est une

Couleur Chaude2, the film tells the story of Adele as she passes through her romantic relationship with

Emma. Though Kechiche’s film is technically an interpretation of Maroh’s graphic novel, I will be

thinking how meaning is constructed in the cinematic rendition specifically, with little reference to the

original book. This is for various reasons, most importantly because of the different emphasis and

meanings produced in Kechiche’s film. Though much of the narrative has a vague correlation between

book and film, Kechiche reconstructs Maroh’s characters within a different critical landscape, one I

will argue that uses notions of class, and the class distinctions inscribed upon the bodies of Adele and

Emma, as its driving force. There are moments when class is implied and mentioned in Maroh’s

graphic novel, however these appear briefly and Kechiche adds to and ignores many scenes the book

presents, radically altering the book’s fabula and syuzhet3 construction. I will also be discussing the

film in its specific construction of moving images and the camera gaze, considering the medium of this

piece as well as its subjects.

The film opens with Adele leaving her house to go to her secondary school; this is how the journey

begins. The first lines are spoken off-camera. We hear this first (non-diegetic) line as we watch Adele

1
Julie Maroh, Blue is the Warmest Color (English Language Edition (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013)
Originally titled La Vie d’Adele, which translates as The Life of Adele. Blue is a French film set in Lille, with my
references to dialogue coming from the English translation off the Artificial Eye DVD release. Adele
Exarchopoulos, who plays Adele, Léa Seydoux, who plays Emma and Abdellatif Kechiche (whom wrote as well
as directed) all were awarded the Palme d’Or at the Festival de Cannes in 2013.
2
Literally translates into English as Blue is a Warm Colour.
3
David Bordwell introduces and explains there two terms fully in the chapter Principles of Narration in
Narration in the Fiction Film, 1986, 48-62.

1
enter school, before cutting to reveal the girl who is speaking them (diegetically). The words uttered

are: “Will I always disagree? I think so. Impossible not to. Ideas take hold of me. I am a woman. I tell

my story.” The class is reading from a text 4 and though the character of Adele is not personally

speaking these words, they seem to come from her as they begin over her image, to show us as

spectators that it is Adele’s story we are entering. (See Fig 1., 2., 3.) Adele has a brief relationship with

a young man named Thomas before meeting Emma at a gay bar and having a relationship with her.

The film does not indicate an exact time frame for Emma and Adele’s relationship but we can assume

it is to be measured in years, as it spans from them studying to both having left education. The film

ends with Emma and Adele’s break up. Emma moves into a new relationship and the film ends with

Adele attending Emma’s painting exhibition in a commercial gallery. Both Adele’s and Emma’s bodies

are read as politically inscribed, as well as politically conscious characters. This is highlighted by the

act of protest which both characters a engage with in the film. First Adele is shown at a protest focused

on working class rights (Fig. 10 and 11), and later Adele and Emma attend Gay Pride together.

Kechiche’s decision to stay with the actress Adele Exarchopoulos’ actual first name, Adele meaning

‘justice’ in Arabic5, seems a significant choice designed to represent her character’s moral standing,

and describes the actor’s relationship to class outside of the film "Actors aren't paid the same as

manual workers. They get the limelight, they stay in fine hotels – built by labourers, serviced by

cleaners.”6

My analysis of Blue is one that argues for understanding the mise en scene in terms of power

articulated through class, sexuality and orifice. By concentrating on the visual domain of this narrative

object I seek to address the issues by way of the following chapter headings: ( 1) Class and Sexuality

as Inscription upon the Lesbian Body,(2) Food as Cultural Signifier and (3) Class and Power in the

4
La Vie De Marianne / The Life of Marianne, the unfinished novel by Pierre de Marivaux, 1727.
5
This is specifically noted within the film during the scene where Adele and Emma first speak to each other at
the bar. See Fig. 12 and 13.
6
Jonathan Romney, “Abdellatif Kechiche interview: ‘Do I need to be a woman to talk about love between
women?’”, The Guardian, October 27, 2013, accessed January 5, 2015,
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/27/abdellatif-kechiche-interview-blue-warmest

2
Artist/Model Relationship. Instead of thinking about ‘class’ as a structure based on an individual’s

monetary income level, I will be using Ben Davis’ definition presented in his book 9.5 Theses on Art

and Class where he describes class as indicating “… a mode of relating to labour and the means of

production. “Middle class” here indicates having an individual, self-directed relationship to production

rather than administering and maximizing the profit produced by the labour of others (capitalist class)

or selling one’s labour power (working class).”7 Using this paradigm, I will seek to critique and account

for the different ways power is distributed throughout relationships in Blue, specifically between

Adele and Emma.

In chapter one I will explore the effects of class and power on the lesbian body. I will do this by

examining redistributions of power through the elimination and shifting of masculinities, and the

effect this has on class based reading. I will draw from Judith Halberstam’s ideas on ‘female

masculinity’, zero/one gender dynamics written about by Luce Irigaray and Sadie Plant and lesbian

body as active political subject discussed by Chris Straayer, and the essay ‘Lesbians and Film’ by Edith

Becker, Michelle Citron, Julia Lesage and B. Ruby Rich.

In chapter two I will argue that class is overdetermined and performed by eating rituals, that the orifice

is a site for class and sexual inscription and that eating and thinking are read as binary positions which

correlate to working and middle class respectively. I will be looking at works by Carolyn Korsmeyer,

Sarah Waters and David E. Sutton, amongst others,

In chapter three I will seek to show the ways in which the relationship between the artist and the

model is underpinned by relationships at class. Of special relevance to this chapter will be the work of

Gregory Scholette and his reading of the artist as subject in capitalist culture.

7
Ben Davis, 9.5 Theses on Art and Class (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2013), 28.

3
Class and Sexuality as Inscription upon the Lesbian Body

In discussions on class told through the narrative of heterosexual relationships gender dynamics are

often dominant and distracting to a class orientated focus. In Blue the lesbian bodies help side step

these inherent power dynamics inscribed onto the male/female bodies in hetero-relationships. I will

argue that the power distribution between men and women is always unbalanced using the

‘zero/one’ analogies employed by Luce Irigaray and Sadie Plant. Irigaray’s essay entitled This Sex

Which is Not One opens with “Female sexuality has always been conceptualized on the basis of

masculine parameters.” 8 This line quickly encapsulates a traumatic power dynamic between men and

women whereby the expression of women’s sexuality, which is often tied to the body and pleasure, is

understood in relationship to masculinity, potentially causing binary positions to gender or

femininity/masculinity, with masculinity being dominant, and female or femininity being ‘othered’.

This opening line may also be referred to patriarchal cultures male privileging which reads female

sexuality through a hegemonic male gaze. Irigaray also speaks of woman’s genitalia being viewed as

““lack”, “atrophy” (of the sexual organ)”9, and that lack is then later related to the symbol, place-

holder, non-number “…”zero”: her body-sex.”10 Sadie Plant uses this zero symbol too when discussing

the cultural inequality between men and women: “It takes two to make a binary, but all these pairs

are two of a kind, and the kind is always kind of one. 1 and 0 make another 1. Male and female add

up to man.”11 This key to description of patriarchy’s corruption of the idea of women can help to

explain some of the issues of distortion that may arise when trying to discuss class using a relationship

8
Luce Irigaray, “This Sex Which is Not One.” in Writing on the Body; Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory,
ed. Katie Conboy, et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 248.
9
Irigaray, “This Sex Which is Not One”, 249.
10
Irigaray, “This Sex Which is Not One”, 253.
11
Sadie Plant, Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and The New Technoculture (London: Forth Estate Limited,
1997), 35.

4
between men and women, and how class situation may ultimately be hijacked as a description of

masculinity, or ‘lack of’ masculinity inscribed on a male body. For example, a man of lower class status

than a women may be seen as a disempowered male and a man of higher class status than a woman

may be seen as reflecting the patriarchal system which is already in place, often and distressingly

referred to as ‘normal’. Consequently, when the male-1 is not present, the 0/1 dynamic changes.

Either this is a relationship where zero can exist without 1 or 1 is transferred.12If the idea of the 1

power dynamic is transferred we could use this as lens for a variety of issues, including class, where

Emma can be numbered with this transference of power because of her more privileged class

background. However, this may be overlooking the presence of men operating outside the central

romantic relationship. In Blue men still, in many ways, do represent power and class dynamics.

Joachim, the “biggest gallery owner in Lille”13 whom Emma wants to impress in Part 2, is male, both

Adele’s father and Emma’s step father secure and assert the class dynamics and ‘stable’ family unit

around the dinner table (further discussed in chapter 2), and Thomas represents the pressured

‘heterosexual route’ for Adele. Kechiche attempts to create a ‘gender equal’ environment to discuss

class in his previous film Couscous (2007)14 by constructing a family dynamic which appears to involve

both men and women in a variety of work load facets, both in and out of the domestic setting.

However, not only does this appeared ‘sharing’ not complete an idea about equality between men

and women, but ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ 15 is a historically violent system that must be read

politically, especially in the face of assumed ‘normality’.

The girl-orientated nature of Adele’s sexuality is established early on it the film. Though Adele’s school

friends pressure her to be ‘attracted’ to and go out with Thomas, a boy from school, Thomas and

Adele’s relationship ultimately serves to cement her lesbianism. This is told, in camera, during their

12
If zero can exist without one we may read this symbol as a critical space that can be thought of in other
ways: orifice centric, it is a place holder and a symbol with an inside and an outside, a site of containment.
13
Discussed at 01:55:25 in film.
14
Couscous, DVD, directed by Abdellatif Kechiche (2007; London, UK: Artificial Eye, 2007).
15
Definition as described by Adrienne Rich in essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” in
Signs, Vol. 5, No. 4, (1980): 631-660.

5
first conversation on the bus. Though Thomas and Adele are sitting next to each other chatting (this

interaction lasts about 3 minutes), the camera never holds them both in the same shot, either cutting

or moving between one or the other, as if to demonstrate their inability to connect on an intrinsic

level, displaying their physical separation in space. (See examples in Fig. 6 to 9). It is also whilst Adele

is on her way to meet Thomas that she first sees Emma, as they exchange what we suppose is ‘love at

first sight’.16 Emma interrupts Adele’s trajectory with Thomas in this moment, and sets Adele on a new

path. Rich describes the assumptions that most women are “innately” heterosexual or that

heterosexuality is “natural” as creating “a profound falseness, hypocrisy, and hysteria in the

heterosexual dialogue, for every heterosexual relationship is lived in the queasy strobelight of that

lie”17 which finds “numberless women psychologically trapped, trying to fit mind, spirit, and sexuality

into a prescribed script because they cannot look beyond the parameters of the acceptable”.18 We

can read Adele’s deep trouble at her lesbian feelings “I feel like I’m faking. Faking everything”19 she

says to her friend Valentin in the scene immediately after having had sex with Thomas in an attempt

to eradicate or dismiss her sexual attraction towards women This reinforces the way we are shown

sexuality through orifice and inscription of power upon the body, as Thomas’ body holds “normality”

and “acceptability”, as Adele’s is torn and ashamed at not wanting to enter this sexual discourse.

The lesbian body holds a different form of subjectivity than the ‘hetero’ woman body, in terms of

gender inscriptions, gender power relationships and sexuality. Chris Straayer argues “The lesbian’s

physical/sexual interactions… insist on a different presence, one that operates outside male

determination. It is her womanness, not her lesbianism, that confines her within the patriarchal

formation of femininity.”20 Here Straayer discusses the effect of the absent physical man in lesbian

16
This is prophesised in the first scene in the classroom where students discuss the concept of love as they
read from Pierre de Marivaux’s novel La Vie de Marianne. This sets Adele up to fall in love at first sight with
Emma in the narrative – see Fig. 4 and 5
17
Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality,” 657.
18
Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality,” 657.
19
00:23:15
20
Chris Straayer, “The Hypothetical Lesbian Heroine in Narrative Feature Film.” In Out in Culture; Gay, Lesbian
and Queer Essays in Popular Culture, ed. Corey K. Creekmur et al. (North Carolina: Duke University Press,
1995),57.

6
physical/sexual “interactions” whilst still acknowledging the patriarchal presence that affects women.

The lesbian-bar space in which Emma and Adele first speak reminds us of the absence of the male

body and that masculinity is, as Judith Halberstam claims, “at least in part, a construction by female-

as well as male-born people.”21 Therefor the absence of the male body does not necessarily correlate

with the absence of masculinity. Due to this absence, class may be better illuminated when power is

not dominantly inscribed upon male bodies, whilst various genders can be assumed by female bodies.

Emma acknowledges some of the ways that lesbian gender deviance plays as she notes Adele’s choice

of drink, “Bull Dog” or “Bull dyke beer”, a description which Adele clearly does not fit into.. Emma is

presented as confident and incorporating a possibly “butch” and female masculinity(told through

shorter hair, clothing, swigging beer from the bottle),. Halbertstam describes “Masculinity in this

society inevitably conjures up notions of power and legitimacy and privilege; it often symbolically

refers to the power of the state and to uneven distributions of wealth. Masculinity seems to extend

outward into patriarchy and inward into the family; masculinity represents the power of inheritance,

the consequence of the traffic in women, and the promise of social privilege.”22 In response to this

analyses of masculinity, we can read Emma’s physical masculine traits as woven to her masculinity as

told through the privilege and power of her class. This bar scene displays both the “safe space” for

lesbians, alongside continuing class, sexuality and gender inscriptions, both upon Emma and Adele

whose “type”, Emma describes as “underage, hanging out in bars at night.” or “a straight girl who’s a

23
little curious” This interaction too defines Emma’s power through her establishment of

‘understanding’ Adele’s type before Adele herself does through lesbian visual body codes. Emma’s

Adamic urge serves to further emphasise her positioning in symbolic masculinity.

21
Judith Halbertstam, Female Masculinity (USA: Duke University Press, 1998), 13.
22
Halberstam, Female Masculinity, 2.
23
Scene beginning at 00:42:41

7
Blue has been viewed as “controversial in a variety of ways”24 due to its use of lesbians as the central

bodies, and claims that the sex scenes were “explicit” 25 , “potent and torrid” 26 and even “most

explosively graphic lesbian sex scenes in recent memory”27. The sex scenes are a variety of lengths

which are as follows: first sex scene (between Adele and Thomas): 2 minutes 14 seconds28, second sex

scene (between Adele and Emma, as all are after this): 6 minutes 35 seconds29, third sex scene: 40

seconds30, fourth sex scene: 2 minutes 29 seconds31 (most of which is the characters talking after

having sex), and fourth sex scene (as part of scene in café near the end): 1 minute 45 seconds.32

The essay Lesbians and Film by Edith Becker, Michelle Citron, Julia Lesage and B. Ruby Rich, calls

attention to the representation of lesbian bodies, asserting that “the most explicit vision of lesbianism

has been left to pornography…Pornography “controls” and uses lesbianism by defining it purely as a

form of genital sexuality that, in being watched, can thereby be recuperated into male fantasy. As long

as lesbianism remains a component of pornography made by men for men, lesbian sexuality will be

received by most sectors of the dominant society as pornography.”33 It is important to take this into

account when recognising that Blue, though not pornography (which I will argue later), is still the

creation of a male director which features nude lesbian sex scenes. This gaze may be read as one

which is partially constructed through the articulation of power in patriarchy. Lesbians and Film

24
Richard Brody, “The Problem With Sex Scenes That Are Too Good,” The New Yorker, November 4, 2013,
accessed January 5, 2015,
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-problem-with-sex-scenes-that-are-too-good
25
A. O. Scott, “For a While, Her Life Is Yours,” New York Times, October 24, 2013, accessed January 5, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/movies/blue-is-the-warmest-color-directed-by-abdellatif-
kechiche.html?pagewanted=all
26
Emily Greenhouse, “Did A Director Push Too Far?,” The New Yorker, October 24, 2013, accessed January 5,
2015
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/did-a-director-push-too-far
27
Justin Chang, “Cannes Film review: ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’,” Variety, May 22, 2013, accessed January 5,
2015, http://variety.com/2013/film/reviews/cannes-film-review-blue-is-the-warmest-color-1200486043/
28
Considered from 00:20:50 to 00:23:04 in film
29
01:11:32 to 01:18:07
30
01:26:30 to 01:27:50
31
01:33:59 to 01:36:28
32
02:32:45 to 02:34:30
33
Edith Becker et al., “Lesbians and Film,” in Out In Culture; Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Essays On Popular
Culture, ed. Corey K. Creekmur et al. (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1995), 27.

8
reminds us that the visual discussion of the lesbian body as a sexual one is the most visible inscription

due to (literally) man-made lesbian-themed pornography34, and Blue is complicit in this inscription and

representation. However, the idea that Blue would be construed as constructed wholly through a

patriarchal gaze or completely problematic due to the difference in gender between director and

subjects works on assumptions that one must be explicitly involved in a particular culture/lifestyle to

discuss it. I reject this notion, and recall how Kechiche himself rhetorically expressed a similar

sentiment in an interview in 2013, “Do I need to be a woman, and a lesbian, to talk about love between

women? We're talking about love here – it's absolute, it's cosmic.”35 I feel that some kind of “solution”

to this issue would itself become problematic as censorship is often unhelpful to what some view as a

difficulty in vision. E.g. for this film to not centre lesbians in its gaze but instead ‘another hetero

couple’, which reinforces the homophobic act of “total absence.”36another point touched upon in

Lesbians and Film. If we think of pornography as employing “explosive style (of lighting, camera angle,

and editing)” which “obstructs the possibility of erotic enjoyment”37 then I would argue the sex scenes

in Blue are more easily likened to Emma’s nude portraits of Adele, erotic rather than pornographic.

Not shot like pornography, a style that often includes a cinematic language including fast cuts and

edits, clear power roles, a performativity of knowingness and ‘playing to camera’, in Blue the scenes

are intimate and beautiful, shot “like paintings, or sculptures”38 similarly to the marble sculpted bodies

in the gallery we see in a previous scene(See Fig 16 – 19), visually relating the bodies in the sex scenes

to the female nude in art (Fig, 20-23). Kechiche creates similarly long, possibly uncomfortable yet

intimate moments in his previous film Couscous; a family’s conversation with underlying tensions, all

34
I write ‘lesbian-themed porn’ instead of simply ‘lesbian-porn’ because of the endorsement of the
fetishization of lesbian bodies fucking in this genre usually created by men for men. This hetero male desire for
the idea of ‘lesbian’ is definitely a problem. Reducing the lesbian bodies for bodies which are not part of the
lesbian desire melts them down into entertainment objects, the lesbians’ subjectivity totally reduced. The
hetero male’s lesbian fantasy has drifted so far from what lesbianism means to women that the description
‘girl-on-girl’ is far more appropriate.
35
Romney, “Abdellatif Kechiche interview,”
36
Becker et al., “Lesbians and Film”, 32.
37
Becker et al., “Lesbians and Film”, 39.
38
Romney, “Abdellatif Kechiche interview,”

9
shot in close up, a young girl erotically dancing between elderly male musicians to distract a public

waiting on food in a restaurant. This cinematic style employed by Kechiche is exciting in its rebellion

to contemporary, mainstream Hollywood where one can often feel overwhelmed by the relentless

pace produced by extreme editing. In contemporary movie culture where this fast style is the norm,

Kechiche’s decision to take time over scenes is brave and beautiful. In Blue, unlike a lot of lesbian-

themed porn, the sex scenes feature no phallic object as extension to the female body. This is notable

due to the frequent and somewhat offensive visual sexual trope that lesbians must masculinise their

bodies with a phallic object during sex to complete the act. Blue seems to respect that lesbian’s bodies

are complete in themselves by showing a pleasure that is not centred on a penis or penis-imitating

object. If this has been the case, we may have read the body with penis as representing a more

powerful position, as we often read “the depiction of heterosexual lovemaking” through its “inherent

power relations” 39. Where we assume the male body possesses more power than the female body.

The sex scenes therefore create a zone of equalizing effect. This effect can aid us in viewing the two

main subjects as ones which have eradicated the zero/one gendering body dynamic, allowing better

illumination of class-inscribed bodies as the main reading of power.

Some have claimed that the lesbian sex scenes lack some kind of realistic nature, describing them as

“unconvincing” 40 . Comments of this nature seem to be forgetting the first sex scene in the film,

between Adele and Thomas, which hardly anybody seems to be concerned with.41 This leads me to

think that the problems arising in one sex scene but not another come from some sort of politically-

correct desire to defend homosexuality by objecting to its representation with one rule, but not

39
Becker et al., “Lesbians and Film”, 37-38.
40
Elaine Sciolino (referring to comment made by author Julie Maroh), “Darling of Cannes Now at Centre of
Storm” The New York Times, June 5, 2013, accessed January 5, 2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/movies/julie-maroh-author-of-blue-novel-criticizes-
film.html?pagewanted=all
41
The sex scene between Adele and Thomas is not directly mentioned in The New York Times articles “Seeing
you Seeing Me” (Manohla Dargis), ”Jostling for Position in Last Lap at Cannes” (Manohla Dargis) “Darling of
Cannes Now at Center of Storm”(Elaine Sciolino), Entertainment Weekly article “Are the sex scenes in ‘Blue Is
the Warmest Color’ artful? Or are they ‘male gaze’ porn?” (Owen Gleiberman) or Variety article “Cannes Film
Review: ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color” (Justin Chang). However, The New Yorker article “New Love” (Anthony
Lane) does, describing the encounter as “sleeping with a boy”.

10
carrying this rule across to other gender/orientation representation. Are there any realistic sex scenes

in film? No. Life is not edited and cut up. Though our eyes blink, looking and cutting in film is always

different to the outside of the cinema. A call for realism and authenticity in film always strikes me as

strange. ‘Real’ life would be boring on screen. bell hooks describes films anti-relationship with the

‘real’ in the opening page of “Reel to Real”,” …giving audiences what is real is precisely what movies

do not do. They give the reimagined, reinvented version of the real. It may look like something familiar,

but in actuality it is a different universe from the world of the real. That’s what makes movies so

compelling.”42

42
bell hooks, Reel to Real (New York: Routledge Classics, 1996), 1.

11
Food as Cultural Signifier

Food is a chief analogy around which various dynamics are able to pivot during Blue. Similarly with

Kechiche’s 2007 film Couscous food and meal times are indicators of domestically intimate family

dynamics and are used as strong class signifiers.

The first time we see Adele with her family they are eating dinner together whilst watching TV.43 This

scene tells us that they are a fairly close family, but that their eating ritual functions differently from

the that of the bourgeois family. Carolyn Korsmeyer, in reference to work by Bourdieu, thinks about

the ways eating differs both physically and socially between the working and bourgeois class: “The

[working class] favours food that is nourishing and filling, bulky, gulpable, massy. The taste of luxury

is for lighter fare, since it need not nourish a body engaged in hard labor. Luxurious taste also puts a

premium on the presentation of dishes and the visual display of a table; it is tolerant of the fiddling

necessary to consume dainty or elaborate dishes without dribbles and spills.”44 Though at this early

point in the film we have not witnessed Emma’s family eating rituals, we can still recognise Adele’s as

fitting Korsmeyer’s description of working class eating ritual. This initial eating scene opens on Adele,

eyes averted to the TV out of shot, with spaghetti sauce around her mouth (Fig. 23). After asking “Can

I have some more?”, we see the heavy, weighty spaghetti as it is dished out by her father (Fig. 24).

This meal time is regarded as casual, not separated from the quotidian through rigorous or imposed

manners. This casual relationship to eating is not dissimilar to when Adele eats with Thomas in the

43
Scene beginning 00:06:00
44
Carolyn Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste; Food and Philosophy (New York: Cornell Paperbacks, Cornell
University Press, 1999), 65.

12
next scene (it is during the beginning of this scene that Adele first sees Emma crossing the road.) The

food is bulky and they converse between mouthfuls (Fig. 25).

The two scenes which most clearly cement the difference in class between Adele and Emma are scenes

which have a meal at their dynamic centre. These two scenes connect to each other as they are

similarly structured whilst representing the characters different class backgrounds45. The first takes

place when Adele goes to Emma’s house for dinner with her parents46 and the second occurs soon

after when Emma goes to Adele’s house for dinner with her parents47. During the scene at Emma’s

house Adele tries oysters for the first time. In contemporary society, oysters are part of middle class

dining, and the oyster object here represents this to Adele. Part of this class inscription is read through

the ritualization of its consumption, an etiquette Emma must teach to Adele. The oyster too, is

involved with wider lesbian implications. Sarah Waters’ lesbian novel Tipping the Velvet opens with

the line “Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster?”48 and later goes on to describe the oyster as “a

real queer fish – now a he, now a she, as quite takes its fancy. A regular morphodite, in fact”!49 (In

Tipping The Velvet this particularly line resonates with the character Kitty Butler’s gender shifting. In

Blue this quality of the oyster may be likened to Adele’s sexual transition). The teaching of the ritual

of how to consume oysters ensues similarly in both Tipping The Velvet and Blue, as one girl intimately

displays the process to the other (in Blue it is obviously Emma that demonstrates this way of eating to

Adele, who likes what she tastes.) The oyster as a sexual innuendo is already woven into the narrative

of Blue from a previous scene, when Emma and Adele eat and talk about food in the park. During this

park scene Adele’s sensual relationship to food is described as she expresses “I eat everything, I could

eat non stop all day.” When Adele describes her dislike for oysters, their texture being like “snot”

Emma replies “They’re like something else.” This is then followed by Adele asking Emma about her

45
Both scenes consistently use close shots which frame characters faces with the camera either moving or
cutting between Adele, Emma and the parents present.
46
Scene beginning 01:21:16
47
Scene beginning 01;30:41
48
Sarah Waters, Tipping The Velvet, (London: Virago, 1998), 3.
49
Waters, Tipping The Velvet, 49.

13
first sexual experience with a girl, phrasing it: “When is the first time that you tasted…a girl?”50, placing

the act of tasting and eating as interchangeable with acts of female sexuality. David. E. Sutton has

described this physical consumption of food as representing a wider social discourse: “Food…is a

particularly good “boundary marker,” perhaps because it provides a potent symbol of the ability to

transform the outside into the inside. In more current terminology food is about identity creation and

maintenance, whether that identity be national, ethnic, class or gender-based.”51 Here Sutton uses

the physical process of eating, the internalizing of an external object, as a way of thinking about how

the body functions as a marker of identities , internal and external. As well as being symbolic of

libidinal desire, oysters have historically spanned both working class and bourgeois eating practices,

being “not only as an article of necessary food, but as one of luxury”52, and “tantalizing the wealthy in

stately homes and sustaining the poor in wretched slums” in 19th Century New York.53 Emma’s parents

are shown to be accepting of Emma and Adele’s lesbian relationship. This is exemplified by the girls

openly physical affection in the scene. Emma’s parents, however, express apprehension and

judgement (what we can assume to be based upon ideas surrounding ‘lack of ambition’) when Adele

talks of her desire to be a primary school teacher. This is told primarily through an atmosphere that

Kechiche creates through looking and expression. It is only Emma who vocalises this judgement by

suggesting the alternative (her alternative)“Maybe you’ll go to school and see something else that

interests you.”

During the meal scene at Adele’s house 54 (with Adele’s parents) the food served is a spaghetti

bolognaise dish, similar to the one the family are shown to be eating at the beginning of the film. This

is a much more casual dish than the oysters. The food is simply consumed, no one needs a tutorial in

eating. When Emma tells Adele’s parents she is an artist Adele’s dad responds with “Living off painting

50
Scene beginning 01:06:30
51
David E. Sutton, Remembrance of Repasts; An Anthology of Food and Memory (Oxford: Berg, 2001) 5.
52
Thomas Campbell Eyton, A History of the Oyster and the Oyster Fisheries (London: Voorst, 1858) B.
53
Mark Kurlansky, The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell (New York: Random House, 2007), xvii.
54
Scene beginning 01:30:42

14
is pretty hard nowadays” and “It’s important to have an artistic side, but you need a real job too. To

earn a living.”, explicitly stating his dismissal of painting as anything more than a hobby. A view we

may assume he has arrived at because of its potential financial instability, therefor showing Adele’s

family dependence on labour which directly effects income. Adele’s parents are notably so set in

heterosexuality as a standard that they are completely naive to the homosexual nature of Emma and

Adele’s relationship, thinking that during their time together Emma has been helping Adele with her

Philosophy studies. This is further established when they ask Emma if she has a boyfriend, to which

she responds to by creating a straight charade. Here class and sexuality form a bind, as an answer

Emma says her boyfriend ”works in business”. Not only does this grant safe cover from the possibly

problematic revealing of her lesbianism, it also forms an alibi for her class privilege which is told

through her role as an artist. Whereas Emma’s parents question Adele’s choice to become a teacher,

Adele’s parent’s judge painting as unsustainable. Here both sets of parents represent the class each

girl was brought up in through sexuality and eating and the body as site of labour. However, as well as

food granting access to the analysis of social behaviour, it also resonates as the physical oral-centric

activity. The orifice as site of consumption and inscription is further explored by each meal scene being

subsequently followed by a sex scene which, as stated in chapter one, centre pleasure in orifice, not

phallic object or symbol. Eating and sex are not just things we do, but things we are.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder also uses the dinner table to project heightened class distinctions in Fox

and His Friends, 1975. During a scene in Fox55 the working class character of Fox has dinner with the

middle class character Eugene, and Eugene’s parents. It is here that class is specifically inscribed on

eating etiquette (or lack thereof), with Fox causing embarrassment to Eugene because he does not

comply to their bourgeois eating rituals. The emphasis on ritualised eating amongst the middle class,

both in Fox and Blue, again recognises class not just as one’s monetary wealth (Fox has a lot of money

due to winning the lottery) but regulated through the performance of body and object. As characters,

55
Scene beginning 00:56:00

15
both Fox and Adele are taught these performances, as well as continually being fetishized as bodies.

Fox is recognised as intellectually vacant, his working class body therefore becomes the entirety of his

corporeality. Adele’s bodily is similarly subjected the these inscriptions, though instead of this being

produced through sex, it is produced through the stilling, muting and containing of her body onto

canvas produced by Emma. Through these constructs imposed upon them, Adele and Fox are further

caught in a double bind: to be bodies which are rendered only as surface, but also to reflect Eugene’s

and Emma’s egos and they attempt to ‘culturally enlighten’ their working class partners.

In the second part of Blue56 the parents are absent, as the two girls can now describe class through

the inscription upon their own bodies, without the ‘extended’ bodies of family. This is most notable

when Emma throws a party at what is now her and Adele’s home, a party that functions as a showcase

of Emma’s paintings for her friends, paintings which exhibit a naked Adele. During this scene Adele

not only cooks all the food (the same bolognaise we have seen twice previously) but also serves the

food and washes the dishes after. Here the middle class crowd unconsciously allow Adele to fulfil the

role of waiter and cook, as Adele too fulfils these tasks seemingly without question. This creates

Adele’s body as the site of labour, but not the site of consumption, only having access to her produce

after everyone else has eaten (they literally consume the fruits of her labour before she does.) This

displays the unconscious, learnt behaviour both middle and working class perform, and as Sutton

writes: “food can hide powerful meanings and structures under the cloak of the mundane and the

quotidian.”57 What Sutton writes here is potent because of the relationship between meaning and the

mundane. The main issue when looking at this facet of this scene is the so called “normality” with

which these different power roles are assumed, an expectation which stabilizes the inequality of class

relationships. In this scene Adele is further excluded by Emma and her friends intellectually, via

conversation about art. Food, again, now becomes the site of wider discourse through conversation

whilst eating. Art, in this scene, is used as a language to separate, exclude and exert an understanding

56
Part 2 begins at 01:36:28
57
Sutton Remembrance of Repasts, 3.

16
of something which Adele is specifically uninvolved in. Not only does Adele not understand, she is also

not allowed to understand, as this lack provides power to those who can articulate themselves in their

chosen field.

Adele is once again looked down upon when she tells the guests she is a primary school teacher.

Emma and her friends use their university-educated language to intimidate and distance Adele

intellectually, through a discussion about Egon Schiele and Klimt. This arises in conversation as Emma’s

friend tells Adele she is writing her PhD on Egon Schiele. We assume Adele feels out of her depth here,

later saying to Emma “They seem so knowledgeable. So cultivated. I felt uncomfortable.” This

moment, however, also allows us to think about academic relationships to art and artists. One could

argue Egon Schiele, a “radical” painter of female and male nudes58, is possibly intellectually assimilated

by this act of the PhD, and emotionally distanced in its envelope. Adele, in an earlier scene with

Thomas in Part 1 of the film, talks about her dislike for the overanalyses of texts, with a preference for

feeling and emotional response, as she explains to him “When a teacher makes me overanalyse a book

or a text, tying everything into the author’s life, it closes off my imagination. I don’t like it.”59 We can

recognise here that Adele’s relationship with art is not naive (she is shown to be an avid and passionate

reader), but her way of reading and understanding is based in feeling and not an intellectual analysis.

This is further implied after Emma’s party when Adele and Emma are getting ready for bed. Emma

pushes Adele to assimilate her writing into the public and intellectual frame work. After Adele says

she has “always just written for myself” Emma responds with “it’s a shame to waste your talent like

that” to which Adele then responds by saying “I write what I feel. I can’t expose my life to the world.”60

Here we recognise Emma’s inability to understand a value system which differs from her own

academic one. This dialectical relationship which is presented between emotional and academic

response to the arts is inscribed upon the bodies through their engagement with food. As discussed

58
“Egon Schiele: The Radical Nude” Title of recent exhibition of Egon Schiele work at The Courtauld Gallery, 23
October 2014 – 18 January 2015.
59
00:15:18 in film
60
During scene which begins 01:53:58

17
before, Adele’s sensual relationship with food and her body (“I eat all the skins”, “As a kid I even ate

my scabs. I loved them”) is reflected in her description of her engagement with art (“ I write for

myself”), both centred on her own bodily relationship with the act, object and consumption. Sutton

explains how this relationship is culturally viewed as a dialectic with the academic or intellectual body:

“Perhaps there is another reason that the topic of food is met with such raised eyebrows. That is that

it seems for many in our culture to involve the baser senses, instincts and bodily functions, not suited

for scholarly or “mental” pursuits. As anthropologists have argued … there is a hierarchy of the senses

in the dominant cultures of the West that ascribes vision to the more evolved cultures and taste and

smell to “the primitive.” Food is not generally seen as conducive to thought. It always has the

potential, in our puritan-derived culture, to be labelled as a giving in to our “primitive” nature, the line

between the gourmet and the glutton being seen as quite thin; and the injunction “don’t eat like a

pig” can be found on the lips of many a parent socializing their children into proper manners.”61 This

quote correlates with much of the activity produced in this scene. The vision-centric setting, activity

and lens discussed by Emma and her friends (as painters or writers on painters) throws Adele into

‘other’, where the middle-class expresses with ‘mind’, and Adele, working class, is confined to ‘body’.

61
Sutton Remembrance of Repasts, 4.

18
Class and Power in the Artist/Model Relationship.

In Blue Emma’s role as the artist is used to discuss a privileged class background. Adele’s subsequent

role as her model becomes part of a dialectical relationship, and is used to describe her working class

body. This Artist/Model relationship of the main characters are set up in Part 1, and go onto become

a main focus of Part 2, the opening shot of Part 2 explicitly demonstrating these roles. A camera moves

over a posed, naked body, slowly until it reveals Emma drawing Adele. What happens in this first

minute is a fragmentation and reconstitution of Adele’s body. The slow, close, shots of Adele fragment

her body, as we move from her toes to her face (Fig, 26 – 29). When we arrive at her face we get a

shot that holds both Adele as model, and Emma as artist in a single shot that separates them through

a deep focus strategy. The camera then changes focus, first Adele is sharp and Emma blurred, then

the reverse (Fig. 30, 31). This visually constructs an alone/together relationship: both parts need the

other, but both also activate different aspects within the whole. Adele’s body is then reconstituted

both in Emma’s drawing and in camera, both shown simultaneously (Fig. 32.) These sequence visually

identifies Emma’s body as an active subject causing Adele’s body to be transformed into a stilled

object. The working class body thus becomes a material and object to be used by the middle class

body for the ‘high culture’ of painting in an artistic practice, whilst reaffirming the notion that the

working class body is defined by its physicality, as discussed in chapter two. The act of painting Adele’s

nude body not only allows Emma to have control over her image on canvas, but also commodifies that

image, and its subsequent distribution. Adele is unaware of the presence of her own body image until

it is pointed out by Emma’s new partner, Lise. Artist/model in Blue is an effective but unusual form of

class positioning, as it has historically been the powerful classes who have been the subjects of the

painted canvas in Western society. Often in Western painting portraits of the ruling class are as much

19
an articulation of ownership as they are facsimiles of their subjects. 62 This role of artist denotes

Emma’s class by showing us that she attends university to study art and does not necessarily need a

profitable exchange for her labour as she has no other occupation as well as no obvious monetary

income from her paintings (established in Part 1) until the last scene where she has a painting show

in a commercial gallery. Here we may assume her lifestyle, up to that point, is maintained by her

parents. Interestingly, Adele as the signifier of working class (maybe lower middle class) is articulated

as a primary school teacher. Here what were once typical notions of class and labour have been

reversed, or at least shown to have transformed somewhat. Whereas Emma uses her hands to create

her work, a physical labour of painting and drawing, a ‘messy’ job maybe, Adele is a cultural and

immaterial labourer, and though the body is still active as we see her reading and dancing with

children, her laborious product is not tangible. If we look at class as one’s relation to power, still using

Davis’ definition quoted in my introduction, then Adele’s job as a teacher should be recognised as one

which is still highly unionised. Artist’s unions, though exist, seem to be sparse with only a small

minority joining to create small groups which cannot compete with a larger “art world” to get even

basic rights. Maybe this lack of collective organising, with the romantic ideal of the artist as an

individual, has created an environment where the middle class may more easily adapt into the ‘Art

World’, not only financially but also psychologically. This is considered by Gregory Sholette in his 2011

book Dark Matter; Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture, where he discusses the artist as a

figure which is being assimilated into capitalist and neoliberal (il)logic: “When it comes to the movers

and shakers of capitalism 2.0, the insubordinate image of the contemporary artist is their sexy

doppelgänger. Forget about the avant-garde’s renowned defiance, the deregulated economy

celebrates deviant practices and eccentric frames of mind.” 63 Here Sholette recognises the

individualistic traits assumed by the idea of the ‘Artist’ role and body and sees how political structures

62
See for instance John Berger’s discussion of Gainsborough’s ‘Mr and Mrs Andrews’ in Episode 3 of the BBC
TV Series ‘Ways of Seeing’, first aired 1972.
63
Gregory Sholette, Dark Matter; Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (London: Pluto Press, 2011),
37.

20
based on the celebration of individualism use it and turn it into its double to represent the same goal

of individualist, capitalist thinking. Sholette then goes onto argue that the ‘Art world’, to function in

this manner, must operate as a kind of pyramid scheme: “…even as enterprise culture hastens to

assimilate even the most dissident, anti-social, ephemeral activity as a potential source of profit,

something else becomes visible that involves a necessary excess of productivity, and an equally

necessary act of expulsion.” 64...“We come to a final enigma concerning culture under neoliberalism:

it appears wholly dependent upon the presence/absence of that which it excludes, an ever-present

oversupply of cultural production that is mechanically encircled and expelled, encircled and expelled,

each time leaving a miner trace of ejecta lodged within the institution that rejects it.”65 In both these

quotes Scholette recognises that inclusion can only exist with the exclusion it produces, a necessity in

zero-sum games such as capitalism. This inclusion/exclusion dynamic is used in Blue during the

conversation on Egon Schiele (discussed in chapter 2), where the middle class intellectuals can only

be sure of their “cultural productivity” positioning by forming it as binary with Adele’s “not

understanding” representative of the working class. The last scene of the film takes place in a

commercial art gallery. This type of gallery, specific to a selling of work, settles Emma’s paintings as a

“luxury good, whose superior craftsmanship or intellectual prestige indicates superior social status.”66

as so much art has come to indicate though these socialite spaces. Again, this is a space, and a world,

out of Adele’s reach, in terms of money, socially and her desire (Emma is in a relationship with

someone else), but her working class body still sustains it; her nude image still present on a canvas.

There are further implications of this painterly representation when regarding the simultaneous

moving-image mode of image making happening through the camera’s agency. Both the characters of

Emma and director Kechiche are the ones who are looking, whilst Adele is consistently that which is

looked at. Looking becomes an act of power, transforming whatever its gaze holds into an object,

whether object of painting or object of film, an object inscribed with class and sexuality. Painting and

64
Sholette, Dark Matter, 40.
65
Sholette, Dark Matter, 40.
66
Davis, 9.5 These on Art and Class, 28.

21
film, such vision-centric modes of address, are tangible objects which we are, however, taught not to

touch. They work as frames and sites for the containment of Adele, a characteristic often ascribed to

the female body in art. Lynda Nead analyses the construction of the Female nude in terms of

containment in The Female Nude; Art, Obscenity and Sexuality:” The representation of the female

body within the forms and frames of high art is a metaphor for the value and significance of art

generally. It symbolizes the transformation of the base matter of nature into the elevated forms of

culture and the spirit. The female nude can thus be understood as a means of containing femininity

and female sexuality. If … the female body has been regarded as unformed, undifferentiated matter,

then the procedures and conventions of high art are one way of controlling this unruly body and

placing it within the securing boundaries of aesthetic discourse.” 67 Here Nead considers the

transformative effect of art upon the female body it represents. In Blue we can see these how these

forms of ‘elevation’ are written into the class relationships. Adele as a working class body can be

disregarded socially, such as is discussed in chapter 2 during Emma’s party, but can be celebrated once

it is once it is contained on canvas. Similarly with the issues surrounding the sex scenes (discussed in

chapter one), Adele as a body in motion has been construed as problematic, but once stilled is socially

acceptable, may be hung on a gallery wall and not confined to the rating on a DVD box.68

67
Lynda Nead, The Female Nude; Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (UK: Taylor Francis Ltd, 1992), 1.
68
Blue was rated 18 in the UK and NC-17 in the USA.

22
Conclusion

In conclusion we can see that it is Adele’s body that becomes the object of fascination for Emma and

Kechiche. Her ‘natural’ look and her ‘untutored’ way are representative of the ways in which she is

captured both by the diegetic paintings and the film. But this desire to represent produces a distance

through the process of containment and objectification. We seem to be closer to Adele while in fact

we are further away from her, she disappears in her visibility as the artist takes the place of the subject.

Kechiche’s film, through the process of a kind of self-reflexivity, becomes a portrait of the artist/auto-

portrait, a triad of director, painter and object/subject of the paintings, a mise-en-abyme of

visualisation. In focusing on the power of the visual, the gaze, the body, Kechiche is able to articulate

the deeply ingrained patterns of class relationships in contemporary Europe. In a visual culture that is

obsessed with food and the body, the film is able to inquire into and critique what is often ideologically

articulated as natural. That is to say that in keeping with the structures of domination and the

naturalisation of ideology, we as a culture often fail to see what is blindingly obvious.

23
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Creekmur, Corey K., and Alexander Doty. Out In Culture; Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Essays On Popular

Culture.

USA: Duke University Press, 1995.

Davis, Ben. 9.5 Theses on Art and Class.

Chicago, ILL: Haymarket, 2013.

Eyton, Thomas Campbell. A History of the Oyster and the Oyster Fisheries.

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Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity.

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Kurlansky, Mark. The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell

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Maroh, Julie. Blue is the Warmest Color.

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Plant, Sadie. Zeros and Ones; Digital Women and the New Technoculture.

London, UK: Forth Estate Limited, 1997.

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London, UK: Pluto Press, 2011.

Sutton, David E. Rememberence of Repasts; An Anthology of Food and Memory.

Oxford, UK: Berg, 2001.

Waters, Sarah. Tipping the Velvet.

London, UK: Virago, 1998.

Williams, Raymond. Keywords (Flamingo Edition, Revised and Expanded)

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Rich, Adrienne. Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Signs Vol. 5, No. 4, Women: Sex

and Sexuality (Summer, 1980), pp. 631 – 660

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Brody, Richard. “The Problem With Sex Scenes That Are Too Good” The New Yorker, November 4,

2013. Accessed January 5, 2015.

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too-good

Chang, Justin. “Cannes Film Review: ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’” Variety, May 22, 2013. Accessed

January 5, 2015.

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1200486043/

Dargis, Manohla. “Jostling for Position in Last Lap and Cannes.” The New Tork Times, May 23, 2013.

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palme-dor.html?pagewanted=all

26
Dargis, Manohla. “Seeing You Seeing Me; The Trouble With ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’” The New

York Times, October 25, 2013. Accessed January 5, 2015.

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color.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&

Gleiberman, Owen. “Are the sex scenes in ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’ artful? Or are they ‘male gaze’

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Greenhouse, Emily. “Did a Director Push Too Far?” The New Yorker, October 24, 2013. Accessed

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Lane, Anthony. “New Love.” The New Yorker, October 28, 2013. Accessed January 5, 2015.

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Sciolino, Elaine. “Darling of Cannes Now at Center of Storm.” New York Times, June 5, 2013.

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abdellatif-kechiche.html?pagewanted=all

27
Exhibitions

“Egon Schiele: The Radical Nude.” The Courtauld Institute. London, UK. Attended December 17,

2015.

Websites

Official Cannes Film Festival Website: http://www.festival-cannes.com/en.html Last accessed:

January 9, 2015.

Filmography

Blue is the Warmest Colour. DVD. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. 2013; London, UK: Artificial Eye,

2014.

Couscous. DVD. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. 2007; London, UK: Artificial Eye, 2007.

Fox and His Friends. DVD. Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. 1975; UK: Arrow Films, 2007.

28