Critic Reviews

Blue is the Warmest Color is a masterpiece of human warmth, empathy and generosity, because in a mere three hours, it gives you a whole new life to have lived.

Blue Is the Warmest Colour really is an outstanding film and the performances from Exarchopoulos and Séydoux make other people's acting look very weak.

It is an extraordinary, prolonged popping-candy explosion of pleasure, sadness, anger, lust and hope.

From this simple, not especially unique love story, Kechiche has fashioned an intimate epic.

Less concerned with classic storytelling than with creating virtual performance pieces on screen, the film features dozens of extended sequences of Adele and Emma both in and out of bed—scenes that are virtuously acted and directed, even if they run on for longer than most filmmakers would allow.

Kechiche and his actresses explore the in-between—ecstasy, exploration, the comfort and eventual boredom of domesticity—and the aftermath, the painful shards of feeling we cling to after something has shattered. And they don't mess around when it comes to the ferocity of love, sex, or, God help us, the two combined.

Mr. Kechiche’s style is dizzy, obsessive, inspired and relentless, words that also describe Adèle and Emma and the fearless women who embody them. Many more words can — and will — be spent on “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” but for now I’ll settle for just one: glorious.

The telling is beautiful and explicit. The truth of its emotionally raw, romantic drama is eternal and universal.

It’s perhaps the first great love story of the 21st century that could belong only to this century.

It’s a simple, even predictable story, yet textured so exquisitely and acted so forcefully as to feel almost revelatory.