This film caused a sensation at Cannes, where it won the Palm D’Or, both for its storytelling and for the lengthy sex scenes featuring the two female leads, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux. Also reported was the grueling shooting schedule to which director Abdellatif Kechiche subjected them, but he certainly got results. Exarchopoulos plays Adèle, the a teenage girl who meets the older Emma (whose dyed hair presumably supplies the film’s American title) and is lured by her confident attitude. With a characteristic open-mouthed expression, Exarchopoulos projects an combination of innocence, curiosity, and nervousness. Kechiche favors an improvisatory style that comes across as much in the introductory high school scenes, where Adèle gossips with friends and, briefly, acquires a boyfriend, as in the later, more intimate, ones.
The characters are stronger than the story, which simply carries the two women forward in time, skipping over some potentially dramatic turf, like anything much about the reaction of Adèle’s parents to either having a lesbian daughter or the older girlfriend. Mainly, the film is not about sexuality, but about the intensity of a first crush and the indelible stamp it tends to leave.
IMDb link
viewed 12/18/13 7:35 at posted 1/24/14
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