Lesbians Cool Over "Blue is the Warmest Color" Portrayal

'Pretty Obviously Two Straight Women Having Sex'

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

French coming-of-age film Blue Is the Warmest Color has been at the center of controversy since premiering at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Despite critical praise for the three-hour exploration of teenage sexuality and relationships, several lengthy lesbian sex scenes featuring stars Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux provoked a fury of warring quotes between director Abdellatif Kechiche and the two actresses.

Adele Exarchopoulos

So it doesn't show two overweight, hairy women wearing flannel shirts and jeans while groping around in the dark?  I'm shocked.

What began as a condemnation of the gratuitous sexuality and the potential mistreatment of Exarchopoulos and Seydoux has devolved into back-and-forth name-calling. With the movie now in limited release, the spotlight is turned away from the film and squarely focused on the real-life drama.

Lea Seydoux

But was the film all that outrageous to begin with?

It's fairly hard to be outrageous in film these days, but if it's possible to offend anyone, it is gays and lesbians.

In a new video from Posture Magazine, filmmaker Yeni Sleidi screened selected scenes from Blue for a group of gay women. While the panelists mostly agree that Exarchopoulos and Seydoux are clearly straight women acting the part, their reactions are consistently blasé when it comes to the controversial sequence.

"I thought it was hot at the beginning, and then it got ridiculous when they kept switching sex positions every ten seconds," observes one viewer. "It started to feel like an infomercial for a kitchen product, where they try and showcase all the things it can do. 'It can chop, it can slice, it can dice, it can puree, it can eat out your asshole.' "

When asked if the questionable sex scenes played out believably, another woman responds that "I would like to say no, but it was a little bit like my mornings."

Do lesbians really imagine heterosexual sex is the way it is portrayed on Hollywood screens, or even San Fernando Valley porn? Hollywood makes everything more extreme and 'sexier' than it is in real life.  Otherwise, we'd just stick to real life, right?  For crying out loud, Hollywood held out Rock Hudson as the ideal heterosexual man for decades.

One of the things I saw while doing research for this article was a comment by Adele Exarchopoulos (I think)when asked whether they really had sex on camera for the film was something to the effect of (not a quote):

Do actors really die in shooting scenes?

Perfect. If I can re-find the exact quote, I'll correct. In the meanwhile, enjoy more Adele and Lea below:

Linked at The Classic Liberal in his Rule 5 round up "The Pretty Reckless — Going To Hell."  Wombat-Socho's grand compilation of Rule 5 posts,  "Rule 5 Monday: Palate Cleanser" is up at The Other McCain.