Last week, the Cannes Film Festival bestowed its coveted Palme d’Or upon director Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Colour based on the graphic novel Blue Angel by Julie Maroh. It is the first time that a film inspired by comics has ever taken the festival’s top prize. The jury also took the unprecendented step of extending the award, which traditionally goes only to the director, to actresses Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux as well.
The movie, about a coming of age romance between two young French women, raised some eyebrows for its intense sex scenes. Maroh herself expressed some displeasure with how the subject was handled:
“The heternomormative laughed because they don’t understand it and find the scene ridiculous. The gay and queer people laughed because it’s not convincing, and [they] found it ridiculous. And among the only people we didn’t hear giggling were the potential guys [sic] too busy feasting their eyes on an incarnation of their fantasties on screen.”
Without having yet seen the film (it’s slated for release in France on October 9), we cannot comment on its content. But we are a bit dismayed that such a milestone achievement does not appear to have registered with those who report on the comics community.
(Image: Léa Seydoux as Emma and Adèle Exarchopoulos as Adèle in Blue Is the Warmest Colour, Sundance Selects)
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