Earlier this week Cannes was all abuzz over tonight’s premiere of Blue is the Warmest Color (La Vie d'Adele - Chapitre 1 & 2), a film with a moving love story and explicit lesbian sex scenes from Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche. Now it has taken the festival’s top prize, the coveted Palme d’Or, according to the Houston Chronicle.
The film, with its three-hour running time, was picked up for distribution by Sundance Selects, so look for it at an art house near you sometime soonish, according to Indie Wire.
Based on the 2010 graphic novel of the same name, Blue is the Warmest Color stars newcomer Adele Exarchopoulos as 15-year-old Adele and Léa Seydoux (Farewell, My Queen, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and Midnight in Paris) as her girlfriend Emma.
Reviews have alternately praised the film's sensuality and explicit sex scenes. The London Times Kaya Burgess called it “one of the most beautifully and unobtrusively observed love stories I’ve seen on film,” while The Hollywood Reporter’s Jordan Mintzer wrote, "Surely to raise eyebrows with its show-stopping scenes of non-simulated female copulation, the film is actually much more than that: it's a passionate, poignantly handled love story,” according to Reuters.
The film’s young leads accepted the award along with their director, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Indie Wire’s got the first clips from the film, but don’t look for explicit lesbian sex in the scenes below, unless talking philosophy is like sex for you (it is for some).
Adele is bullied at school.