Sometimes an actor comes along, who´s performance leaves me pretty much speechless. This is one of those times. Adèle Exarchopoulos almost goes beyond acting in this highly emotional and heartbreaking performance that will etch itself into your brain. Her co-actor does a fantastic job, but Exarchopoulos is simply stellar here and beyond comparison. The genius of her acting is that you almost never feel her presence as acting at all.
Adèle is a young and inexperienced middle class girl in high school studying french and philosophy. She is in a clique of extrovert girls, but feels more and more isolated and hanging on the fringe, since she is group pressured to get sexually involved with boys in the vicinity and mostly out of conformity, she hooks up with a handsome young man and goes on to have sex with him. One day while walking in town, she spots a provocative artist type girl with blue colored hair, arm in arm with another girl. Later that night, while masturbating, she surprisingly to herself, discovers that she fantasizes about the girl with the blue hair.
She has a small kissing fling with another confused girl in her class and she realizes that she is genuinely attracted to girls. A gay boy in her class has figured out what is going on with her and brings her to a gay bar one night. When she leaves, she comes across a lesbian bar and enters. There she spots the blue-haired girl once again and she recognizes her back also. Over the evening they get acquainted and agree to hook up soon. Back at the school the girl-clique is at her immediately and she feels attacked and ridiculed for not conforming to the collective demand.
From here their relationship evolves quickly into a storming erotic obsession with each other. Particularly Adele is completely absorbed with Emma (Léa Seydoux) and becomes literally emotionally addicted to her. They spend all spare time together and slowly introduce each other to their respective families. Emma´s mother and father are relaxed and accepting of her sexuality, while Adele has to conceal it to her parents. It is clear that it is not something Emma is happy about and slowly indicates a future conflict about mentality in their relationship.
The second part of the movie, which is approximately an impressive 3 hours long, deals with the evolution of their maturing relationship. They have moved in together and start to live a sort of "normal" family life. But Emma is the older and more mature and ambitious of the two and Adele is slightly confused at her growing demands for her conformity and lack of ambition. Emma starts to move away emotionally from Adele who feels more and more confused, isolated and alone in a world that she may not completely understand or be a part of.
She has taken the roll of a sort of traditional house wife, while Emma is the more cool and bohemian type who likes champagne and oysters. Adele sticks to the spaghetti she knows from her bourgeois upbringing. As the distance between them widens Adele begins to give in to male interest in her youthful beauty. She has an affair with a school teacher colleague but is discovered by Emma one night when he drops Adele of a bit away from their apartment.
Emma goes into a rage and demands to know for how long she has been lying to her and if she is sleeping with the guy. Adele finally has to confess to her deeds but begs Emma to understand that she is confused and feels alone in their relationship. Emma is cold and kicks her out for good and to never come back. Completely confused and devastated Adele leaves. Adele is constantly breaking down in her emotionally unstable state and is unable to process her situation or figure out what went wrong and her own limitations in the development of the relationship they had.
They meet in a bar and Adele basically begs Emma for sex and intimacy, but she rejects her while telling her that there is another woman in her life. It is clear that Emma still have a strong physical attraction to Adele, but that she fights the urge to stay away from her. Adele is as confused as she ever was and cannot figure out why things are going this way. Their final meeting is at one of Emma´s exhibitions and it finally becomes clear to Adele that it is a rational choice from Emma to disconnecting from Adele and she accepts her fate. But she still does not understand why.
I want to point out why i think this movie works so well, because on the surface it may sound kind of banale and simple and longwinded. The cinematography is not impressive and the plot is not interesting or really engaging to be frank. But I realized that these aspects have been turned way down to let the development of Adele´s emotional landscape come up front and make the movie on its own. This takes an incredible actor and that is where Exarchopoulos comes in. Her looks are perfekt for an 18 year old confused bisexual girl. Her face is an emotional landscape that completely fills the screen and at times extends emotions I never really thought was possible to show in a movie.
Maybe it takes a viewer that is him/her self has a connection to their teenage years of love and emotional bursts that seemed like an explosion in their head. The homo sexual aspect is not relevant in this sense, but i think it helps removing the viewer from the traditional boy/girl love relationships as they have been portrayed in movies for more than a century. It actually helps connecting to her emotions in a more pure way and I have a gut feeling that it helped the actors too, who I think are not homosexual in real life, but I may be guessing wrong. The acting of Adele is so natural and so spot on while completely keeping a feeling of impulsiveness, that I lack words for describing her. I just have to say watch it - you will not regret it.
Rating: 10/10
