Blue Is The Warmest Colour: The film that took Cannes Film Festival by storm

By Yasmeen Banu

Blue Is The Warmest Colour, released in France last year in October is scheduled to be released here in Singapore this May.

Starring Léa Seydouz (Midnight in Paris) and Adéle Exarchopoulous, the French film took the 2013 Cannes Film Festival by storm and unanimously won the Palme d’Or award, the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival and the FIRPRESCI Prize, which is short for Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique (International Federation of Film Critics). 

Blue Is The Warmest Colour courageously explores a young woman’s (Adéle Exarchopoulous) experiences of thrilling love, social acceptance and sexuality.

The film is the first to have the Palme d’Or awarded to both the director, Abdellatif Kechiche and lead actresses, making both actresses the only women apart from director Jane Campion to have ever won the prestigious award.

The film, much loved and accepted by audience internationally, is described as “simple, even predictable story, yet textured so exquisitely and acted so forcefully as to feel almost revelatory,” and “…the most natural, committed performances you’ll ever see.”

Because of its strong explicit scenes, Media Development Authority has referred the uncut version of Blue Is The Warmest Colour, also known as Adele Chapters 1 & 2, to Film Consultative Panel (FCP).

MDA’s films classification database said the film contains “several strong, prolonged and explicit sexual scenes between the two women.” This includes a seven-minute-long sexual scene where the two actresses were naked and engaging in various sexual activities, “including oral sex and masturbation.”

MDA’s spokesman said,

The FCP felt that some sexual scenes between the lead characters were too prolonged and explicit, and are clearly beyond the film classification guidelines, which state that explicit portrayals of sex between persons of the same gender are not allowed. Taking into account our guidelines and FCP’s views, MDA has thus informed the distributor that the film has exceeded the R21 guidelines.

The film was later resubmitted for rating after cuts made by the distributor, Shaw Organisation.  

Rated R21, it is scheduled to be released on May 1^st.