No matter how many films you’ve seen, “Blue is the Warmest Color” is likely to be one of the most intensely sexual films you’ll ever watch. Following the passionate lesbian love affair that explodes between Emma (Léa Seydoux) and Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), the movie is filled with graphic sex scenes between the two, to the point that the film has been the subject of some controversy.
The centerpiece of “Blue is the Warmest Color” is a seven-minute sex scene between Adèle and Emma that features all manner of different sexual acts and positions. Indeed, it was these scenes in particular that drew some ire for the mostly well-received film.
“The most discomfiting thing about Blue [Is The Warmest Color] is that it ultimately feels like a menage a trois involving the actors and the camera, staged for the benefit of the director,” wrote J. Hoberman of ARTINFO. Tammy Olerman of Bi*** Media agreed, writing, “Exarchopoulos and Seydoux are constantly undercut by [director Abdellatif] Kechiche’s direction, which often seems more about his directorial desires than the motivations of the story’s protagonists.”
Elsewhere, there is a highly explicit scene of Adèle pleasuring herself while she imagines making love to Emma, a heterosexual encounter that depicts full-frontal nudity, and several other scenes that are highly sexual. While the film retained its NC-17 rating, IFC waived the ruling in New York City, where it allowed high school-aged teenagers to also see the film.
