Blue is the Warmest Color:

A Heterosexual Man’s Attempt to Depict Lesbian Love

Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color (known as La Vie d’Adèle: Chapitres 1
et 2 in France) is a French film that follows the protagonist, Adèle Exarchopolous, as her life and
perception of sexual identity completely change after crossing paths with Emma, an aspiring
painter with vivid blue hair. The story opens by introducing Adele, a teenager dealing with the
emotional complexities and sexual awkwardness of young adulthood and puberty. 1 Under
pressure from her friends to lose her virginity, she started to date a fellow boy student and
engages in sexual acts with him, however, discovers that she feels apathetic towards the
relationship, both in romantic and sexual aspects.2 She began to think that maybe relationships
and sex were not for her, only for this perception to be negated upon exchanging glances with the
confident, slightly older, Emma (Ley Seydoux)walking by on the street.3 Ever since they crossed
paths, Adele became fixated on Emma, to the point of questioning her sexual identity as she
fantasized about Emma while masturbating. They met again at a lesbian bar, and from there on,
they became closer, engaged repeatedly in sexual acts, and soon had a relationship and moved in
together. The film ends with the two growing apart and separating, unable to maintain the
relationship as they pursued their careers. Adele cheated on Emma by having sex with a man
while Emma fell in love with her colleague, Lise.
Released in 2013, Blue is the Warmest Color became widely appraised for its
representation of the LGBTQ+ community and even won numerous awards. Many have declared
it as one of the best films of 2013. Some critics even championed it as an honest and
groundbreaking story of lesbian relationships,4 but is it really? When I initially watched it as a
young, closeted lesbian, I also thought that it was a film that contributed to queer representation
in media and celebrated it as it was the first lesbian film I’ve known of that was actually
popularized and became mainstream. Although queer representation ought to be progressive and
good for the emancipation of queers, Blue is the Warmest Color’s representation of lesbians,
especially lesbian sex, is regressive and problematic as it fetishizes lesbians, and promotes
patriarchal ideals. Its representation and depiction of lesbian relationships depart from the
graphic novel it adapted, Le Bleu Est une Couleur Chaude, which was originally written by Julie
Maroh, a non-binary lesbian. Upon watching the film, Maroh criticized it, saying that the film’s
portrayal of lesbian sex and female bodies is uninformed, unconvincing, and pornographic.5
This paper shall be a feminist critique of the film’s representation of women’s bodies and
lesbian relationships as pornographic through Elinor Mason’s philosophy and discuss how it is
harmful to women and lesbians.

1
“I'm a Match to Adele from Blue Is the Warmest Color,” CharacTour, accessed May 21, 2022,
https://www.charactour.com/hub/characters/view/Adele.Blue-is-the-Warmest-Color#:~:text=Adele%20lives%20in
%20a%20conservative,parents%20understand%20her%20at%20all.
2
Ibid.
3
Kristin M. Jones, “Review: Blue Is the Warmest Color,” Film Comment, August 9, 2016,
https://www.filmcomment.com/article/review-blue-is-the-warmest-color-abdellatif-kechiche/.
4
Monika Bartyzel, “Girls on Film: Blue Is the Warmest Color Is a Sexed-up Failure,” The Week (The Week, January
8, 2015), https://theweek.com/articles/460470/girls-film-blue-warmest-color-sexedup-failure.
5
Elaine Sciolino, “Darling of Cannes Now at Center of Storm,” The New York Times (The New York Times, June 5,
2013), https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/movies/julie-maroh-author-of-blue-novel-criticizes-film.html.
Pornography disguised as lesbian love
It is not rare for lesbian films, especially European ones, to have explicit scenes
showcasing the intimacy between the characters. A few examples would be Celine Sciamma’s A
Portrait of A Lady on Fire (2019), Francis Lee’s Ammonite (2020), and Park Chan-wook’s The
Handmaiden (2016). All these films revolve around lesbian love and contain explicit sexual
scenes between the protagonists. However, it differs from Blue is the Warmest Color’s
representation as the aforementioned films focused on the awkwardness, messiness, and intimacy
of lesbian sex; how it is emotionally charged and sometimes ugly. I assert that Blue is the
Warmest Color, on the other hand, focuses on the objectification of women using lesbian sex as a
vessel, primarily focused on arousal and sexualization such that instead of being a representation
of lesbian love, it is pornographic and contributes to the fetishization of women, especially
lesbians.
According to Elinor Mason, pornography is defined as a sexually explicit material that is
primarily designed to produce sexual arousal. 6 In the discourse on which pornography is
accepted or not, people often use aesthetics as an excuse to redeem pornography which has its
roots in obscenity laws, which make artistic merit a defense against an obscenity charge. 7 When
it comes to aesthetics, Kechiche was heavily influenced by the new realism of a post-Amélie
French cinema8 which closely follows the protagonist. Kechiche stated in an interview that his
goal was to idealize the female body, saying that “What I was trying to do when we were
shooting the scenes was to film what was beautiful, so we shot them like painting, like
sculptures. We spent a lot of time lighting them to ensure they would look beautiful; after the
innate choreography of the loving bodies took care of the rest, very naturally.” 9 Although it is
beautifully filmed, too beautiful even, aesthetic distinctions do not necessarily map onto moral
distinctions.10 Something that is aesthetically stunning can be morally bad, which is the case with
this movie. In fact, it fits into Dworkin and MacKinnon’s definition of pornography as it portrays
the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures that include (1) the
protagonists being presented as sexual objects, things, or commodities; (2) women presented in
postures of sexual submission, servility, or display; and (3) the protagonists’ body parts,
including but not limited to vaginas, breasts, or buttocks, are exhibited in such a way that they
are reduced to those parts.11
Julie Maroh’s powerful and inspiring graphic novel has been whittled into an emotionally
fragile and lust-filled story that’s been filtered through an unmistakably male gaze. 12 As I
watched the film, everything seems to progress slow and boring except for the sex scenes which
were so explicit that each scene took up almost 10 minutes of screen time, as well as the scenes
wherein the camera would slowly pan to voyeuristically show the protagonists’ bodies as they

6
Elinor Mason, “Pornography,” in Feminist Philosophy: An Introduction (Routledge n.d.), 69.
7
Ibid.
8
B. Ruby Rich, “Blue Is the Warmest Color: Feeling Blue,” The Criterion Collection, February 24, 2014,
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3072-blue-is-the-warmest-color-feeling-blue.
9
Elaine Sciolino, “Darling of Cannes Now at Center of Storm,” The New York Times (The New York Times, June 5,
2013), https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/movies/julie-maroh-author-of-blue-novel-criticizes-film.html.
10
Mason, “Pornography,” 69.
11
Ibid, 69-70.
12
Monika Bartyzel, “Girls on Film: Blue Is the Warmest Color Is a Sexed-up Failure,” The Week (The Week, January
8, 2015), https://theweek.com/articles/460470/girls-film-blue-warmest-color-sexedup-failure.
slept, ate, and went about their lives. Throughout the film, Kechiche’s camera stays close to
Adele’s face, eager to catch any grimace, tear, or drip of snot that keeps the film highly personal
—until the sex scene, wherein Kechiche pulls the camera back to move up and down over the
female form, lingering as his actresses contort into a series of complicated positions,13 which as a
lesbian, I can attest that would not feel good in real life and only serves to show off the female
body in a sexualized and over-exposed manner. The sex scenes in the movie are alarmingly
identical to mainstream lesbian pornography marketed to men, which shows stereotypically
feminine lesbian bodies, completely hairless and flawless, in positions that would further show
off their genitals and lust-filled facial expressions. In Maroh’s work, the sex scenes focused on
the connection between Emma and Adele as she is introduced to sexual pleasure, however,
Kechiche’s camera focused entirely on the erotic event instead.14
The problem with the explicit scenes in Blue is the Warmest Color does not lie in its
obscenity, but that it objectifies and says false things about women and specifically, lesbians, and
is thereby harmful.15 As it objectifies women, it may cause men to have sexist attitudes, to think
of women and lesbians as sex objects, or as having secondary status. 16 The way that lesbian sex
is portrayed in the movie serves the male gaze as it focuses on the attractiveness of the
protagonists and showing off their bodies. Aside from fetishized lesbian sex, the film also shows
Adele cheating and having sex with a man while still being in a relationship with Emma. This
shapes male desire in a way that is problematic for women,17 especially lesbians, as it reinforces
the eroticization of lesbianism and feeds the belief that feminine lesbians are not homosexual and
still desire men. Maroh stated in an interview that as a lesbian, what was missing on the movie
set were lesbians,18 saying that “maybe there was someone there to awkwardly imitate the
possible positions with their hands, and/or to show them some porn of so-called ‘lesbians’,”
because, except for a few passages, the brutal and surgical display of the so-called lesbian sex
turned into porn.19 They20 also stated that it made them feel very ill as in the movie theater,
everyone was giggling during these scenes. 21 The heteronormative laughed because they don’t
understand it and it seemed ridiculous, the gay and queers laughed because it is not convincing,
and the only people who were not giggling were the men too busy feasting their eyes on an
incarnation of their fantasies on screen.22
Additionally, lesbians watch these films hoping for representation, and if they are not old
enough to distinguish representation from fetishization, they may use this as a reference on how
they should act and perform sexually. According to MacKinnon, our ideas about sex, men, and
13
Monika Bartyzel, “Girls on Film: Blue Is the Warmest Color Is a Sexed-up Failure,” The Week (The Week, January
8, 2015), https://theweek.com/articles/460470/girls-film-blue-warmest-color-sexedup-failure.
14
Ibid.
15
Mason, “Pornography,” 73.
16
Ibid, 74.
17
Ibid.
18
Anne Thompson, “Feminists Debate Cannes-Winner 'Blue Is the Warmest Color‘s Patriarchal Gaze,” IndieWire
(IndieWire, October 25, 2013), https://www.indiewire.com/2013/10/feminists-debate-cannes-winner-blue-is-the-
warmest-colors-patriarchal-gaze-195397/.
19
Ibid.
20
“They” here is used as a non-binary pronoun to refer to Maroh and does not refer to multiple people.
21
Anne Thompson, “Feminists Debate Cannes-Winner 'Blue Is the Warmest Color‘s Patriarchal Gaze,” IndieWire
(IndieWire, October 25, 2013), https://www.indiewire.com/2013/10/feminists-debate-cannes-winner-blue-is-the-
warmest-colors-patriarchal-gaze-195397/.
22
Ibid.
women are not natural or innate; rather, they come from our society, and as our society is a sexist
one, the ideas about gender and sexuality that we have are bound to be sexist. 23 Furthermore,
according to Mason, pornography presents an unrealistic picture of arousal and satisfaction, and
young people who learn about sex from pornography risk developing a distorted set of
expectations.24 This is also reflected in Cameron and Frazer’s copycat model, according to which
viewing pornography inclines people to copy what they see. 25 Blue is the Warmest Color is the
first lesbian movie I have watched as it was the only mainstream lesbian film at that time. As I
was young and still discovering my sexuality, this movie took part in shaping my beliefs and
expectations about what lesbian sex ought to look and feel like as it was so sensationalized that I
believed it was a real depiction of lesbian love. Thus, when I first tried to engage in homosexual
sex, I referred to the scenes in the movie only to find out that it was not pleasurable nor
comfortable. Passionate, caring, and pleasurable lesbian sex does not look anything like how it
was presented in the movie.
Mason also pointed out that women are also exploited in the making of pornography 26 and
this holds true for the actresses hired to play the protagonists. Similar to how lesbian
pornography actresses are cast, the actresses hired for Blue is the Warmest Color are not lesbians
but are heterosexual ciswomen. In an interview, the actresses described a grueling experience
where they felt “trapped” during the shoot.27 They described the filmmaking experience as
“horrible” and both actresses say they do not want to work with Kechiche again. 28 Adele says
that the reason the movie was so emotional is because they were really suffering as Kechiche
directed them to hit each other and even urged them to continue even when one of the actresses
got injured.29 In a scene where Emma tried to stop Adele’s nose from running, Kechiche
screamed, “No! Kiss her! Lick her snot!”30
A lesbian movie made for men
With what has been stated above, it is clear that Blue is the Warmest Color is not a
representation of lesbian love, rather, is a banalization and fetishization of women and lesbians
through the male gaze. Although it is patterned after a graphic novel written by a lesbian, it was
transformed into a highly erotic film by a man employing voyeuristic male gaze.31 It was not
made for lesbians, rather, was made to further sexualize them and contribute to the sexist
narratives that are already perpetuated in the patriarchal society.

23
Mason, “Pornography,” 74.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid, 79.
26
Mason, “Pornography,” 73.
27
Monika Bartyzel, “Girls on Film: Blue Is the Warmest Color Is a Sexed-up Failure,” The Week (The Week, January
8, 2015), https://theweek.com/articles/460470/girls-film-blue-warmest-color-sexedup-failure.
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bartyzel, Monika. “Girls on Film: Blue Is the Warmest Color Is a Sexed-up Failure.” The Week.
The Week, January 8, 2015. https://theweek.com/articles/460470/girls-film-blue-warmest-
color-sexedup-failure.

“I'm a Match to Adele from Blue Is the Warmest Color.” CharacTour. Accessed May 21, 2022.
https://www.charactour.com/hub/characters/view/Adele.Blue-is-the-Warmest-
Color#:~:text=Adele%20lives%20in%20a%20conservative,parents%20understand%20her
%20at%20all.

Jones, Kristin M. “Review: Blue Is the Warmest Color.” Film Comment, August 9, 2016.
https://www.filmcomment.com/article/review-blue-is-the-warmest-color-abdellatif-
kechiche/.

Mason, Elinor. “Pornography.” Essay. In Feminist Philosophy: An Introduction. Routledge, n.d.

Rich, B. Ruby. “Blue Is the Warmest Color: Feeling Blue.” The Criterion Collection, February
24, 2014. https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3072-blue-is-the-warmest-color-feeling-
blue.

Sciolino, Elaine. “Darling of Cannes Now at Center of Storm.” The New York Times. The New
York Times, June 5, 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/movies/julie-maroh-
author-of-blue-novel-criticizes-film.html.

Thompson, Anne. “Feminists Debate Cannes-Winner 'Blue Is the Warmest Color‘s Patriarchal
Gaze.” IndieWire. IndieWire, October 25, 2013.
https://www.indiewire.com/2013/10/feminists-debate-cannes-winner-blue-is-the-warmest-
colors-patriarchal-gaze-195397/.

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