Blue is the Warmest Color is a quiet character study and romance unlocked by its title alone. Adele, a high school student focusing on literature, tries to fit in by dating the boy everyone knows she’s perfect for. She feels nothing from the relationship and winds up meeting Emma, a university fine arts student, at a lesbian bar. Emma’s bright blue hair catches her interest and helps her begin to form a sense of identity.
The color blue is important to the film. It really is a subtle device reflecting Adele’s self actualization. In the beginning of the film, when Adele is just following whatever her friends and family expect her to do, there is very little blue on the screen. The first memorable appearance of blue is a cross, Romeo & Juliet style, where Adele and Emma’s eyes meet while crossing the street and pass without incident. A bit more blue begins to fill Adele’s life as the thought of the beautiful stranger with blue hair sends her into sensory overload. The color blue grows and fades in shade (light blue is tepid, cyan is vivid, navy is overwhelming) and vibrancy to reflect Adele’s mental state and feeling of independence.
It really is quite remarkable how that kind of detail can set the tone for a film. By the time her high school friends realize Adele is a lesbian, you can’t avoid blue on the screen. Everyone is wearing dark wash jeans and vibrant scarves and hats. The sky is practically glowing and even the lockers in the school seem to transform. The dialogue is so simultaneously slice of life and driven by references to very specific philosophers, writers, and artists that the color conceit really opens up the text.
Down With Love is all about design and betraying expectations. The art direction is phenomenal. Bright pops of color and striking graphics fill every inch of the frame, establishing a visual reference for the battle of the sexes. It’s far more nuanced than the pink and the blue of Barbara and Catcher’s lives. Catcher is constantly surrounded by traditional designs and what the mainstream culture would define as hip for a bachelor. Barbara is framed in sleek minimalism and explosive touches of Mod and Beatnik counter-cultures wherever she goes. Their meetings swing back and forth between the two worlds as the balance of power shifts in the relationship.
Dodge (Steve Carell) learns the world will end in three weeks due to a cataclysmic asteroid collision with earth. As soon as the radio story ends, Dodge’s wife flees the car and never comes back home. The world is ending and no one wants to waste their time being with anyone or doing anything they don’t want to except for Dodge. He goes to work, pays his housekeeper, and tries to make the most of the world ending. Then Penny (Keira Knightley) climbs outside of his window on the fire escape and quickly befriends him after years of never talking in their apartment complex.
Honestly, the biggest problem with this adaptation of Anna Karenina is that the sets aren’t artificial enough. You can’t go from plywood cutouts, unpainted on the back, to lush landscapes rolling into the far distance. When you choose a conceit like a play on film to visually break up the levels of society, you need to commit or dump it. You can’t have fake trees and a painted flat in one scene and an actual forest in the next without pulling the film apart.
The acting is as strong as it can be in this kind of film. There are actions taken that even Keira Knightley and Jude Law can’t force into a believable response because Tolstoy himself did not make them believable. These are awkward moments designed solely to push the story in new directions and the cast makes them as believable as possible. You can only push soap opera histrionics so far before alienating the audience. The entire ensemble finds the truth of this adaptation and makes you care deeply for their plight.
