Thursday 12 September 2013

SOMETHING NEW

Blue is the Warmest Color
Writer/Artist Julie Maroh

 A hymn to love.
―Le Figaro


Julie Maroh started writing Blue Angel when she was 19 and it took her five years to complete it.
3 years later...
The live-action French film version of Blue is the Warmest Color won the Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013.


Originally published in French as Le bleu est une couleur chaude, Blue is the Warmest Color is a graphic novel about growing up, falling in love, and coming out. Clementine is a junior in high school who seems average enough: she has friends, family, and the romantic attention of the boys in her school. When her openly gay best friend takes her out on the town, she wanders into a lesbian bar where she encounters Emma: a punkish, confident girl with blue hair. Their attraction is instant and electric, and Clementine find herself in a relationship that will test her friends, parents, and her own ideas about herself and her identity.
Vividly illustrated and beautifully told, Blue Is the Warmest Color is a brilliant, bittersweet, full-color graphic novel about the elusive, reckless magic of love. It is a lesbian love story that crackles with the energy of youth, rebellion, and desire.
First published in French by Glénat, the book has won several awards, including the Audience Prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, Europe’s largest.
The live-action, French-language film version of Blue Is the Warmest Color won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2013. Directed by director Abdellatif Kechiche and starring Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos, the film generated wide praise as well as controversy for its explicit scenes. 


The live-action French film version of Blue is the Warmest Color won the Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013.

The author Julie Maroh was less warm towards the film. She stated that she does not consider the film as a betrayal, but as "another version ... of the same story".
She criticised the sex scenes in the film, comparing them to porn. 
She said "The heteronormative laughed because they don't understand it and find the scene ridiculous. The gay and queer people laughed because it's not convincing, and found it ridiculous."
 She continued by writing that
As a feminist and lesbian spectator, I cannot endorse the direction Kechiche took on these matters.
But I'm also looking forward to hearing what other women will think about it. This is simply my personal stance.
—Julie Maroh, Adèle's blue

Once again, as with Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, a remarkable graphic novel becomes the source of a remarkable film

-Paul Gravett 2013


IN STOCK/£15

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