Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)

Kechiche’s passionate lesbian love story is a screen romance built for the long haul with universal themes. Three hours fly by thanks to the committed performance of Adèle Exarchopoulos in this comprehensive and heartfelt depiction.

Kechiche builds the film with sensitivity to emotional nuance and collaboration with the remarkable actresses, capturing the electric connectivity between the two women. The experience resonates universally with anyone who has loved and faced its loss.

It is a minutely detailed, searingly erotic three-hour study of first lesbian love that is the richest film of Kechiche’s career. The freewheeling perspective on young desire finds nuanced drama in maintaining an unfixed sexuality beyond coming-out tropes.

The beauty of the film lies in dropping viewers onto the emotional wavelength of its heroine through her expressive performance. It is at heart an ordinary coming-of-age romance but benefits from a wealth of character and environment building rather than clichés.

The critic calls the film outstanding and passionately praises its evocation of love as cataclysmic and unforgettable. The lead performances are singled out as making other acting look weak.

It is unlike any love story seen before, with raw, off-beat exchanges and an overwhelming emotional intensity over three hours. The performances convey the cost and vulnerability of putting oneself out there in a relationship.

The critic finds the film very good and touching, praising its focus on young love and the central performance of Adèle Exarchopoulos for demonstrating how love feels.

The review highlights the film's rich detail and compassionate meditation on love and loss, praising the lead performance and the immersive quality that makes the three-hour length feel engaging.

The review describes the film as mostly tremendous and unmissable, anchored by fiercely committed performances, while noting its explicit elements and some reservations.

The review notes the film's graphic sex scenes as stirring yet over-extended, while praising the second half for its emotional depth and the lead performances, especially Exarchopoulos's vulnerable portrayal.

The critic discusses the Palme d'Or winner as a coming-of-age lesbian love story but focuses heavily on controversies around its graphic sex scenes and questions the director's male gaze approach to the material.

The critic describes the film as one of cinema’s most realistic coming-of-age stories and the most moving love story of the year, anchored by natural and committed performances from the leads.

The story traces the full life cycle of a relationship between two women over ten years, emphasizing that sex without love is nothing and life without love is even less. It highlights the exceptional performances of the leads as near-perfect and the film's intimate, elemental look at vulnerability.

Kechiche hits emotional paydirt with a story spanning several years focusing on a passionate lesbian romance that breaks new ground in uninhibited depiction of sex. The performances are terrific and give the impression of delivering a close approximation of undiluted reality.

The film trades the graphic novel's new voice and political implications for the same old male gaze. It praises the central performance of astounding stamina by Adèle Exarchopoulos while noting the story's split into two halves.

The film is a passionate, poignantly handled love story held together by phenomenal turns from the two leads despite its long running time. It explores class differences and the difficulties of sustaining a relationship beyond initial passion.

The critic praises Adèle Exarchopoulos as a revelation in her role as a sexually awakened teenager and highlights the film's authentic exploration of modern love, calling it intensely moving and richly detailed.

The three-hour character study follows a high-school student's romantic and emotional journey over several years with an older woman. It singles out the film's focus on everyday life, including time in the classroom and kitchen, over the bedroom scenes, and its affecting portrait of longing.

The review calls the film fearless, relatable and beautiful, bestowing epic status on female desire through its intimate close-ups and emotional depth, making it one of the year’s best.

The film is a searingly intimate character study of a French teenager's passionate relationship, marked by explosively graphic lesbian sex scenes and an extreme running time. It praises the galvanizing performances of the leads and the director's raw, sensual approach to life.

The review hails Adèle Exarchopoulos's stunning lead performance as the core of this epic romance about desire and first love, noting how the film powerfully captures the dizzying thrill of young passion despite its length and explicit scenes.

The film delivers the most transportative, truthful and sublime movie experience at Cannes, submerging the viewer in the story of a defining first love with unmatched insightfulness and empathy. Exarchopoulos and Seydoux deliver revelatory performances that erase barriers between audience and character in this absolute cinema achievement.

The film is an intimate and intense emotional epic that banishes negative connotations of the coming-of-age drama label through its portrayal of a transformative relationship. Committed lead performances, nuanced filmmaking and epic scope make for something extraordinary.

Kechiche's vivid film is a commanding painting of passions, relationships and enlightenment that contrasts sharply with Hollywood fare through its attention to everyday details like eating and drinking. The intimate, explicit love scenes and close focus on the lead actresses' expressive faces create a revelatory portrait of love and social difference.

The critic praises the film's intimate portrayal of a young woman's emotional journey in love, highlighting Adèle Exarchopoulos's heartbreaking performance as the standout element that anchors the lengthy narrative.

The critic credits the lead actresses' astonishing performances for holding together this sprawling three-hour relationship drama, praising its vivid sense of real life, emotional intimacy and unpredictable messiness akin to being in love.

The critic calls it a beautiful, wise, erotic, devastating love story that justifies its length by fully depicting the growth and changes in a relationship over years, singling out the exceptional performances of the two leads for praise.