'Blue Is the Warmest Color': movie review - New York Daily News

Léa Seydoux (l.) is an art school grad student and Adèle Exarchopoulos is a confused 15-year-old when they meet in "Blue Is the Warmest Color."

Let’s talk about “Blue Is the Warmest Color.” After all, everybody else is.

But should they be?

As directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, this overbuzzed Cannes winner is a fairly simple, unevenly told and expertly acted romance about two young French women in love.

Oh, and it has several extensive, NC-17-worthy sex scenes. Think that has anything to do with all the interest it’s getting?

The truth is, Kechiche has made a quietly lovely coming-of-age tale that, under other circumstances, would be just as likely to open and close before you even heard about it.

There are several graphic love scenes between Adèle Exarchopoulos (l.) and Léa Seydoux in the French drama "Blue Is the Warmest Color."

For one thing, at 179 minutes — three hours — it’s a full hour longer than it should be. But unchecked indulgence defines this film, for both better and worse.

Our heroine is Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who begins the movie as a smart but confused 15-year-old. While her friends flirt, date and gossip, she hesitates, alternately accepting and resisting pressure to participate.

Nothing feels right until she meets beautiful, blue-haired Emma (Léa Seydoux), an art school grad student. They spend more and more time together, until before we know it Adèle has graduated and they’re sharing an apartment. Kechiche’s style is to push us ahead swiftly, which keeps the pace manageable, but also leaves us at a frustrating remove from the characters’ personal development.

Anyway, by this point Adèle, who has become a kindergarten teacher, is mad about the mesmerizing Emma. But Emma’s career as a painter is taking off. And her intellectual and emotional sophistication keeps the two young women on dangerously uneven footing.

There are some — including Julie Maroh, author of the graphic novel on which the movie is based — who are hesitant to accept that the adapter of this female-written, female-centric book is a man. Especially one who’s chosen to emphasize so explicitly the sexuality of his female characters. And yes, in casting two gorgeous women and then removing all their clothes, Kechiche has made a classic male fantasy.

Adèle Exarchopoulos (l.) and blue-haired Léa Seydoux in Abdellatif Kechiche's "Blue Is the Warmest Color," which is based on a graphic novel by Julie Maroh.

But both actresses are so outstanding, and so ideally matched, that their committed performances serve as a sort of counterargument. This is their film, at least as much as it is their director’s.

Still, is that enough?

Not really, which is perhaps why we get not one graphic bedroom scene, but a trio of them.

The first, and most explicit, serves to establish a sense of intimacy. The others, one might cynically suspect, serve to keep audiences in the theater so Kechiche can pretend he’s making an opus about the insatiability of human appetites. He isn’t, despite his heavy-handed obsession with drinking and dining. (Unless you, too, are in love with Adèle, there is no reason to watch closeups of her repeatedly shoveling spaghetti into her mouth.)

Kechiche’s other films, including 2007’s immigrant drama “The Secret of the Grain,” have been critically acclaimed as well. And yet, they didn’t earn nearly as much attention as his latest effort. What could they have been missing?

eweitzman@nydailynews.com