Your Film Professor

I have to confess that I wrestled with what to say about the wonderful Blue is the Warmest Color (2013, Abdellatif Kechiche); that is, I knew I wanted to write about it – it is one of those films that stayed with me after I screened it – but every time I sat down to write my thoughts, words eluded me. To break through this I thought I might try a different approach and look at some of the provocative images and intertextual references in the film and comment on them as I go. I could be wrong about this but it seems to me that director Abdellatif Kechiche creates extraordinary intertextual references that add layers of meaning to the film, not just symbolic meaning but diegetic meaning that adds layers of meaning to what we get in the narrative. However, because this film is just so rich in intertextual intersections, I can only get to some of these references here, my hope being that I can interject an analysis that becomes part of the dialectal unpacking of this multilayered film.

In this early wonderful image, Adèle’s reflection not only already informs us of — punctuates visually — her lack of a fixed Self (her fragmented Self), but in the third image of her fading out, we see how fragile identity is, especially for young people, as various influences act to move identity in many different directions, sometimes in unhealthy directions (more on this in a moment).

We get many shots of Adèle alone, here the blue motif beginning a multilayered meaning of the color blue, a complex confluence of meanings including what is signified here, Adèle’s lostness, her inability to determine her identity, her desire, the blue then signifying the loneliness of her alienated state of mind, where she feels disconnected from the world around her (the blue of Emma then connected to this as Emma will be a major step in Adèle’s journey to self-determine her Self). This sense of disconnect from the world around her — and her Self — is magnified by two key signifiers in this image, the bench itself, which speaks to the place where other people could be (e.g., the void of no people sitting with her gets hyper-emphasized, speaks to the lack of real bonded connections in her life) and that she is sitting perpendicular to the bench suggests that she is already going against the norms of society.

In this important sequence, we get our first stress on the crucial class focus in the film, Adèle seeming to have at least this possibility for a substantive identity formation, the blue motif here (the blue smoke that issues from the cans, apparently their activist color marker) then suggesting another meaning for the color blue, signaling Adèle’s potential for agency and activism in her life, which we see again later when she joins in the LBGTQ rights march, all of which plays into the key Sartrean focus of existentialism, these activist marches signifying a way for Others to enact their own identity and not let other (ideological, cultural, societal, personal) influences dictate Self (more on this crucial element below). I don’t think Kechiche ultimately goes anywhere with this specific agentic angle (e.g., activism), but nonetheless I think this element is important in the sense that it suggests a key aspect of Adèle’s potential for controlling (creating) her own Self. In terms of the class signification, this moment is significant because it codes Adèle as coming from a working class background, a key coding for us, for it reveals to us this built in (born into) identity formation, e.g., that we are always already formed, a forming that may be a monumental block to self-determination, taking control of our own lives. Finally, I think this moment too becomes a way for Kechiche to inject an intertextual interjection, here the march’s protest chant expressionistically reflecting Adèle ‘s interior feelings of Otherness, her sense of herself as a “reject,” “outside” of society, and that she too cannot “find [her] place,” “does not have the right face” (e.g., is not considered “normal”).

This is a crucial, crucial moment, one that I would argue undergirds the whole film, an intertextual reference (e.g., Jean-Paul Sartre) that crucially injects this existential conception into the film. In short, channeling Sartre’s profound conception, what Emma says here is that we are not slaves to ideological (normative) conditionings and that we can create (determine) our own Self, which, of course, speaks profoundly to the LBGTQ community and their rejection of heteronormative, gender/sex normative ways of being. As Emma is coded as “blue” (not just her blue hair but her blue eyes and blue clothes…see this post for a nice analysis of this blue motif in the film) the blue motif takes on complex meaning as Emma becomes more than just Adèle’s desired object — her breakthrough of determining her sexual desire — she also becomes both the vehicle for Adèle’s own “freedom” of Self, in terms of realizing this freedom of Self (freedom from her class status, freedom from her heteronormative chains, freedom from letting Others determine her identity) but also in terms of a vehicle for realizing her need for fulfillment in her life itself, presumably at least part of why Adèle is so alienated. Of course, the problem is that Adèle latches on to Emma as her singular mode of fulfillment, an unhealthy, unstable mode of gaining fulfillment in one’s life, a point I’ll return to below. More importantly, this moment is also for us, as a way for us to see that we need not be slaves to normative conditionings, that we too can “choose our lives without any higher principle.”

Here we get Emma’s first “vision” (representation) of Adèle, which Adèle already grasps as her but not her, a key line that informs how representations work at least in part in this film, which I’ll return to below.

Adele’s classmates’ disturbing homophobia speaks to the normative regulatory forces that drive peoples’ choices and actions, those conditionings that Sartre was referring to, that which makes us unfree. Of course, for an adolescent, the views and judgements of one’s peers are especially wounding, since young people are already dealing with the anxieties that come with establishing an independent Self and with the deeply felt need to be accepted by one’s peers.

Set against the blue background, this moment becomes a profound intertextual injection. As we get interjected several times previously, Kechiche  gives us another moment here where a teacher is discussing with his class a literary text, this time a Francis Ponge poem. Here is the full textual reference:

Teacher: “He mentions a ‘pathological scruple.’ What is that?” Student: “In stanza two, he says, ‘The only vice of water is gravity.’ He associates natural law, the universal law of gravity, with a vice, as if…everything natural is perverted, and vice versa. It’s sort of the opposite of Catholic conservatism, which would say that vice is not natural, and you have to…repress it, reject it. He says that gravity itself is a vice. It can’t be avoided.” Teacher: “It’s totally intrinsic to water.”

Ponge believed that water is formless and that “gravity” is what “intrinsically” (inexorably) shapes it, suggesting that though “gravity” is “natural” (“can’t be avoided”), it is also “perverted,” because it doesn’t allow water to be its “natural” form, a profound analogy to of course sexual/gender/sex orientation itself, where LBGTQ individuals are not allowed to be their “natural” Selfs. That this lecture follows on the heels of both Adèle’s torment by her classmates (acting in the role of “gravity”) and Emma’s disquisition on Sartre (taking control of one’s life from “higher principles”) we can see Kechiche’s hyper-focus on how so-called “natural” forces (e.g., ideological forces such as “Catholic conservatism”) “form” (condition, control) us to be what we are not, which, in turn, turns us into something “unnatural.” In part, this film is Adèle’s journey to a more “natural” state, which means becoming who she wants to be.

While viewing some art pieces, Kaschiche again registers Adèle’s split Self visually (here beginning the process of her becoming who she wants to be), though in this potent image, he splits her Self between herself and Emma, who already begins to project her desire for who Adèle should be, who she wants her to be (more on this in a moment).

 

In one of the most complex intertextual references, Adèle and Emma are viewing art, though, conspicuously enough, their focus seems to be on women “nudes.” Kechiche has said in interviews that he wanted to create echoes of how throughout history, artists have pushed the boundaries of censorship of women’s desire, lesbian desire, and women’s (nude) bodies, which, in turn, is how they break free from the “higher principle” bondage of constricting ways of being (e.g., heteronormativity, patriarchal objectification, phallocentric codings of bodies, religious formations), so clearly this is at least part of his focus of this moment. Had this been men looking at these women “nudes,” I think we would make the automatic leap to this being a commentary on the “male gaze” (e.g., in short, simply put, women becoming the passive, fetishized, controlled/created object of pleasure for male consumption); however, by making this “gaze” of female nudes a “female gaze” so to speak, Kechiche I would argue is radically re-inscribing in these images of women nudes a wholly different contextualization, empowering women’s (nude) bodies, women’s desires, lesbian desire, in effect freeing it from phallocentric control and determination. In other words, Kechiche is commenting on how throughout history, via such art works, artists have radically deconstructed oppressive, dehumanizing norms, mores, taboos that limit, control women’s (nude) bodies, women’s desire, lesbian desire (e.g., by giving license to these desires, by freeing women from the bondage of covering up their body), a feminist tradition that I would argue he is not only highlighting but also contributing to with this film.

I think there is something else going on with these intertexual injections as well. First, as this moment is a prelude to Emma and Adèle’s first time being intimate, we have here Kechiche playfully signifying their desire for each other via their signaled desire to gaze at other (nude) women. More complexly, though, we have spelled out here a complex interplay of how we determine meaning of Others. That is, when viewing representational art, we insert our own subjective meaning into the frame, signifying what these representations mean to our own subjectivity. In the same way, we often tend to do the same thing with people, where we read them through the filter of our own Self, which is why we are often with someone, being with them because we see in them something they are not. In some cases, we actually try to exert our will on them, making them something we want them to be, turn them into something they are not (e.g., in effect turn them into a “representation”!). That Emma creates art, we can especially see this echo in the film, in that she literally turns Adèle into a representation, both literally (e.g., she uses Adèle as a model) and figuratively (she attempts to “create” Adèle into her “model” of who she would like her to be). Though we especially see this with Emma who wants Adèle to be something she is not (more on this in a moment), I think we also get this with Adèle as well, who wants Emma to remain “blue” so to speak, wants her to remain her source of emotional, personal, sexual fulfillment (more on this below).

To my mind, this is a key moment, for in these words, we get an extra dimension of Adèle, in that she understands the importance of higher learning, not just in terms of learning in general but in terms of being “exposed” to alternative ways of thinking and being, a mode of being in itself that is necessary for one’s existential ascent.

As we’ll see again and again, Emma is not satisfied with Adèle’s desire to be a teacher; because of her upper class elitism and her desire for something more in a mate, Emma attempts to mold Adèle into her vision of what Emma wants her to be (e.g., did Emma really forget to tell her parents that Adèle did not like oysters?!?).

I love this image! If we place this image in the context of how Kechiche uses representational art in the film — how we give representational figures meaning — this image then punctuates how we also do this to our children, fill them up with meaning, though in the context of the thematics in the film (e.g., existentialism), I think the point here is how, via ideological (normative) conditionings, we in effect determine (fix) identity for children.

 

In another interesting intertexual reference Kechiche plays in the background of a party for Emma G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929) and The Diary of a Lost Girl (1929). Here too we get a general intertextual meaning and a meaning specific to this moment in the film. Like the earlier images of women “nudes” art work, here too Pabst’s films controversially explore women’s desire and at least calls attention to lesbian desire, breaking down taboos and pushing the boundaries of normative values and mores. But I believe that the specific placement of these images speaks to a deeper element as well. Pabst’s films also explore how the two heroines in the film, Lulu and Thymian, are ruled and controlled and preyed upon by predatory men and ideologies (e.g., societal “norms” and mores). In the sequence where we see these Pabst film images, strikingly, we get similar meanings introduced. Adèle is hosting a celebration for Emma. Kechiche distinctly reveals a fundamental shift in Adèle and Emma’s relationship in this sequence, not to mention that Adèle is now coded as something entirely different than what she was before. When the art curator says to Adèle “What you do is really nice…. On the paintings. Your presence, your poses. Stunning” we get a clear signal that Adèle has become less an equal partner in the relationship and more of a utility object for Emma, which is of course echoed later when Emma insinuates that she wants Adèle to be more than a cook for her, speaking to how Adèle’s part in their relationship truly has shifted to a utility role. Moreover, here again we see how Emma wants Adèle to be something other than she is, wants her to be a “writer,” enter into her world of art appreciation, culture, and knowledge, glaringly absent in their discussion with two friends, one of whom is writing her dissertation thesis on Egon Schiele (another intertextual intersection?). In this exchange we see punctuated what is lacking in their relationship, Emma’s hunger for someone who can be more than an deeply intimate lover but also an intellectual-artistic partner. In this way, we see how, like how Lulu and Thymian are Othered by society, Adèle is Othered by Emma and her colleagues and friends, e.g., objectified and degraded by Others, her job as a nursery teacher seen as too “low” for this cultured crowd, hyper-accentuating her (working) class status as well. In a way we can see how, like how Lulu and Thymian are “sold” to men, Adèle is “sold” as well, as her image becomes an image to be consumed and bought, echoing how she is seen by Others, e.g., as a model and cook/hostess. Perhaps no image sums up this shift to utility object than this tremendous image:

Interestingly, echoing all of this is Samir’s anecdote of his experience acting in America where his Arab descent and ability to speak Arabic is exploited for stereotyping in American action films, another reference to how he too is used (consumed) by powerful ideological forces (e.g., white supremacist, American exceptionalism, patriotism, nationalism, the Self/Other dichotomy, etc.).

What is so striking in this sequence is not only how Emma continues to push Adèle in directions she desires (hypocritically attempting to do the opposite of Sartre’s dictum on determining our own Self) but how Emma begins to see Adèle’s lack in life, her lack of fulfillment. Throughout the film, we see an Adèle “adrift,” lost, alienated, for reasons not really specified I don’t think beyond just a general lack of fulfillment (perhaps one of the film’s weaknesses). Adèle is coded as an individual hungry for more in life than just going through the motions, her love of school and learning and activism speaking to this, though that doesn’t seem to translate into her being fulfilled. As a girl coming into sexual maturity, her discovery of her lesbian desire for Emma sparks an initial hunger for exploring this newfound sense of (lesbian) Self. In the process, Emma becomes, in the Lacanian sense of the word, the “phallus” (“signifier of the mother’s desire”) or the “imagined perfect object,” Adèle injecting into Emma more than is there, their intimacy (sexual and otherwise) becoming that which immature Adèle latches onto as a misdiagnosed source of fulfillment. (This film is ripe for a Lacanian analysis I think but alas, I’ll have to save that for a another day!)

In this splitting of Emma, Kechiche punctuates Emma’s own split Self in this moment, not so much I don’t think her being torn between Lise and Adèle (or forgiving Adèle and staying with her or not) but rather her own guilt at having cheated on Adèle, my sense being that Emma has already “left” Adèle so to speak, with Adèle but not really with her (again, she becomes a utility object) beginning her relationship with Lise before she has discovered Adèle’s cheating, her anger and extreme hurting of Adèle then being a kind of overcompensation of her own feelings of guilt, her torrent then directed as much at herself as Adèle. (Thanks to my daughter Peyton for giving me this idea!)

In this final clash between Emma and Adèle we get all of that which has been brewing bubbling to the surface, Emma’s need for something more than impassioned intimate sex and Adèle admitting that she has placed her whole sense of Self and fulfillment unhealthily on Emma despite the fact that Emma had already moved on from her and thus she “felt all alone.”

In Adèle’s post-break-up phase, Kechiche begins to code Adèle as “blue,” signifying, yes, her depressed (lost, alone) state over the break-up but I would argue signifying also her movement towards a more mature, self-determining Self.

Adèle really stands out in this busy mise en scene, her dark colors of course coding her as in her mourning period — the signifiers of joy and cheerfulness that only children can exude hyper-accentuating Adèle’s depressed state — though my sense is that by placing her in this context of so many codings of childhood innocence, the point here may be that her mourning goes beyond her loss of Emma, e.g., this is the moment where Adèle loses her “innocence” so to speak; that is, her loss of Emma was something more fundamental than it being Adèle’s first heartbreak, e.g., since Adèle had made Emma here source of fulfillment, made Emma part of her very sense of Self, Adèle is suffering from an existential crisis, a loss so fundamental that she is in effect like a child, back to finding her way in the world, back to determining her sense of Self.

The registers of this line are off the chart! Ostensibly, I guess Adèle’s “joke” speaks to her desire to give herself to Emma for Emma’s sexual consumption though that only begins to get at the complexities of this line. For one thing, there is a consumption motif in the film in general, Adèle commenting at one point how she loves to eat and eats everything (except oysters!), a not too subtle coding of her enormous hunger for fulfilling her need for intimacy (and, perhaps, an “oral” fixation); then we also get that party moment touched on above, where the party goers are conspicuously filmed devouring Adèle’s spaghetti while talking about men and women’s sexual desire (and someone cracking a joke about a worm who gets “gang-banged” by the spaghetti!). In short, though Adèle says the right things to Emma in this moment — that she has gotten “fulfillment” from her teaching, especially from giving extra support to struggling children — clearly, she is still in the same place she was before, wanting to go back to her utility role as giving her Self to Emma for her enactment of Self, a need for being determined by outside forces.

Here she spells out her pathology, that controlling/creating her Self is “beyond [her] control,” her lack of a agentic Self most clearly realized in this moment.

This series of images ostensibly speaks to Emma’s painting of pregnant Lise, and, since these words are spoken over Adèle, perhaps even more ostensibly seem to speak about Adèle, which, in the case of the “absent gaze” and sense of “anguish,” certainly registers expressionistically with Adèle in this moment; however, to my mind, this moment speaks to an important element in Emma’s work, which, in turn, then, speaks to some deeper meaning in this moment and the film overall. The individual speaking to Emma here says that she can see in her work “old Emma, new Emma, blue and red,” speaking to Emma’s two life stages and creative periods, her “blue” period with Adèle and her “red” period with Lise. In this context, we can see how Emma’s work not only reflects her vision of her partners but also how they reflect Emma’s own state of mind at the time as well. In this way, we can see with the one “blue” work of Adèle Emma’s sense of being at the moment, her immature but “free” sense of being, where she lives for pure feeling and intimacy (the French word jouissance perhaps captures this expression of a carnal Self best), her time spent with Adèle then being more about basking in carnality and emotional intimacy, which I think is registered in that image of Adèle, the image speaking to an orgasmic blissfulness and joy. Her “red” period is more complicated, the “red” signifying less in terms of passion and love (typical signifiers of the color red when associated with relationships and sexuality) but rather signifying maturity and a more sophisticated and complex way of being. In this way, going back to this description of Emma’s Lise piece, I think this person’s words may be capturing Emma’s present moment, [Emma] “totally at peace,” registering an “incipient happiness” but also registering “something troubling in her eyes,” an “anguish,” which I would say fits the earlier sequence when Emma and Adèle meet, where we see Emma want to be with Adèle but knowing that she cannot go back to her “blue” period, cannot go back to being with Adèle, not let her sexual desire for Adèle rule her mature contentment with Lise; she has grown since then and though she acknowledges that her intimacy with Lise is not as intimately-sexually satisfying as it was with Adèle, she has found in Lise a deeper, mature fulfillment that transcends orgasmic intimacy. Nonetheless, there is still a loss with this shift in sensibilities, a loss of losing this extraordinary ecstasy of Self in intimacy. What’s so interesting about Emma’s “red” pieces is that while they do exude a sense of plenitude, they also do indeed register a kind of dark energy, almost as if this “incipient happiness” and the life enrichment that has come with it also stems a sense of “anguished” loss.

In addition to what I convey above, e.g., how this image expressionistically speaks to Emma’s interior state of mind at the time, here we really get spelled out Emma’s “vision” of Adèle, which, as Adèle said before is her and not her, the “not her” speaking to Emma’s vision of her, as someone Emma envisioned and not as who she really was, which, of course, speaks to Emma’s desired and determined view of Adèle, signified by her paintings. In other words, again, Emma literally turned Adèle into a representation, which is what she was for Emma to begin with, a canvas to which she could paint her ideal imaginary object, her presence still haunting not just this space but Emma as well (and, again, thus why Emma is still “anguished,” still haunted by Adèle). But what makes this moment exceptionally complex is that freed from the relationship with Emma, this piece now becomes something Other than just attached to Emma’s vision of Adèle. That is, in this moment, with Adèle facing her own Other (“blue”!) image (or, more accurately, her three Others, a commentary itself on Adèle’s fragmented Self, adding yet another layer of complexity to this image), Kechiche creates a kind of mirror image moment as well, the painting acting as a kind of, yes, signification of Adèle’s own past jouissance, but also I think a potentiality for Adèle, the images of her speaking to an Adèle we never really see in the film, a truly “free” Adèle, a “free” spirit, an airy and untroubled Adèle, an Adèle without the stresses of her alienated Self and her traumatic loss of Emma and her struggles with her lesbian desire, an Adèle who is more substantively, existentially “fulfilled.” And here we begin to see emerge the powerful coding of the color “blue,” re-inscribing previous meanings to a newly emerging Adèle (more on this below).

For me this image begins a complex wrapping up of meaning through a series of intertextual references. This particular image of Adèle set against a painting of pregnant Lise and of Lesbian desire in general is just loaded with meaning. For one thing, this is just such a fascinating juxtaposition of the two “life bearers” in Emma’s life, the mature, “real” Lise (ironically conveyed through representation), who gave Emma stability and a bondedness that goes beyond just emotional (carnal) intimacy, Lise giving to Emma the intellectual, cultural, and artistic connection she so craved, and Emma’s “blue” period, represented by Adèle herself, where Adèle, Emma’s “muse,” gave Emma a pure carnal joy and intimate bliss that inspired so much beautiful work, not to mention that it is obvious that Emma still longs for this transcendent ecstasy she experienced with Adèle. More complexly, though, with this juxtaposition between “red” — coded now as both signifying Emma herself in her present mode of being and signifying a more mature shift in being — and “blue” — coded as Adèle’s existential  movement towards self-determination — we get yet another intertextual suggestion of Adèle’s evolutionary tract, beginning her movement away from Emma and towards a self-determining, self-fulfilling path, presumably a path that will lead her to her own “mature” mode of being (more on this below).

Adèle’s second awakening begins here, where she sees for herself that Emma truly has moved on, fixed in her mature relationship with Lise, the painting of Adèle behind Emma and Lise signifying just this, that Adèle (Emma’s “blue” period) truly is behind Emma now, both the painting — in its depiction of joy — and Emma and Lise themselves — so happy in the moment — speak to how a painting’s meaning can shift in context, e.g., now just echoing Emma’s glorious moment, the painting then becoming an expressionistic revealing of her interior joyful place in the moment, utterly “fulfilled.”

I’m not exactly sure what to do with this provocative image except that I note it becomes it seems so meaningful! Emma mentions that she is sharing this exhibit with another painter (Ade Bernard) so I’m assuming that these works are his. The blue in the work seems to further the blue motif in the film and particularly connects to Adèle’s blue dress. The abstract nature of the image (faintly signifying a woman’s body) perhaps expressionistically also speaks to Adèle’s interior state or perhaps speaks to her in this moment, which I take to really punctuate her transitoriness, e.g., she is beginning to move out of the orbit of Emma’s influence, a beginning perhaps, a moment where she begins to write her own vision of herself, a Self still in distorted form but one which will begin to take shape now.

Kechiche gives us one more richly complex image, Adèle at the point of a triangle, the foundational points being (A) that all important joyful painting of her and (B) Lise and Emma so happy together, her blue outfit making her the glaring standout signifier. For me this image signifies a couple of meanings: Her blue outfit again connects to (conspicuously signifies) the blue in the painting of her, suggesting that this is the final punctuation of her movement in that direction (as she is the point of the triangle, this movement away from Emma is reinforced positionally as well), moving towards Emma’s vision of her, free now of Emma, she can embrace her own Self, the blue then signifying not what it signified before for Adèle, e.g., figurating Emma, or her need to fill her void with Emma, but rather what the blue signified for Emma herself (as she wore the color) and for us, a movement towards self-determination. That is, like Emma, she will fill her own lack of that fulfillment void with a more self-determining Self, a Sartrean signification of creating her own vision of herself.

This last image of Adèle is perhaps more meaningful than it seems. That we get Samir looking for her speaks to a circular moment where now it is Samir seeing in Adèle his ideal (blue) object of desire, Adèle’s blue now circularly shifting modes of being, though that Kechiche chooses to not have Samir find her (at least for now!) and that Kechiche chooses to film Adèle moving away from us (he could have chosen a frontal shot of her) just reinforces what we got previous to this moment: Adèle is finally putting Emma behind her and moving in a new direction. Interesting that she seems to be on a one way street, further reinforcing this idea, that she will go her own way, create her own Self, however she chooses to render her Self. In this context, then, blue is indeed the “warmest color,” because it signifies an existential movement towards a self-determined Self.