What I am is a seasoned film-watcher, and in that capacity, I can say this about the sex scenes: there are too many of them, and at least two of them are too long.

I am not now and have never been a lesbian, so I really shouldn't pretend like I have a meaningful opinion on whether the sex scenes staged by a straight male director and two straight female actors are meaningfully true to the lesbian experience, but I'll say that the complaints by Julie Maroh, author of the source material, that it's very male gazey seem pretty much spot on, and anyway when a lesbian author looks at the adaptation of her lesbian lovers and tells the world, 'that's not how we do it', I'm inclined to at least give her the benefit of the doubt. The explicit, barely-simulated lesbian sex. Maybe I'm wrong about that, for certainly the grand scale of time the film covers justifies that kind of epic treatment, but there are a lot of small moments that are… fine, but the difference between a movie that needs to be three hours long and a movie that needn't aren't a plethora of 'fine' moments. More than most Palme d'Or winners, I mean.įirst, the running time: it's a 'lifespan of a romantic relationship' drama that is great at three hours, and would probably be just as great and in the same ways if it was, say, two hours and a half.

The Palme d'Or winner for 2013, Blue Is the Warmest Color, comes with some serious baggage attached. World premiere: 23 May, 2013, Cannes International Film Festival

Emma blue is the warmest colour