Cinematic Realism: La vie d'Adèle
In honor of Pride month, I wanted to share a film theory paper I wrote last year on one of my favorite films, Blue is the Warmest Color. There are no real spoilers in this analysis, so feel free to read even if you haven't seen it. And if interested afterwards, you can watch this movie, it's currently streaming on Netflix.
Dating back to Ancient Greece, there has been an endless debate over the nature of art. Every new art form that has been developed has had to contend with similar questions, and the same applies for cinema. As one of the relatively newest mediums to be invented, film has been the topic of much speculation, as various theorists have come up with their own ideas about the purpose of cinema and how they think spectatorship operates. Chief among them was French critic André Bazin, whose theory of cinematic realism has been influential on countless films that have been made since he started writing on them in the 1940’s.
On the simplest level, Bazin’s theory can be boiled down to his belief that film should document rather than interpret the world. Although Bazin’s conception of realism was strictly apolitical in nature, his theory was very much a reaction against the totalitarian regimes of Europe in the 1930’s and early 1940’s, using realism to try to re-appropriate cinema and show reality as it was before being changed and “abused” by these regimes. Unlike Sergei Eisenstein, another prominent film theorist noted for his ideas about montage (aka editing), the meaning of film for Bazin didn’t derive from a collision of disparate elements, but from an ontological presence of reality filtered through the filmmaker’s sensibility, creating an “inseparable whole” that is not so much “concerned with choice of the subject as with a particular way of regarding things.”
According to Bazin, the distinction between a mummy and a statue from Ancient Egypt is critical to understanding the difference between plastic arts (i.e. paintings, sculptures, ceramics, etc.) and cinema. Whereas a statue of a pharaoh in semiotic terms is merely a signifier for the pharaoh and thus not the same as the actual pharaoh, a mummy of the pharaoh is both a signifier as well as the signified object; in other words, the image of the mummy represents the actual pharaoh but it also simultaneously is the actual pharaoh. As Bazin saw it, plastic arts fall into the same category as a statue. A famous painting like the Mona Lisa, for instance, may resemble a real person, but the person we see depicted in the painting itself is not real. However, Bazin believed that photography, and by association cinema, was different. Aligning it with the mummy, Bazin saw in photography the unique ability to record reality without human intervention being required, declaring it to have “freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness.” Due to the supposed objective nature of photography, Bazin believed the camera could transfer the reality from the object to its reproduction, as the photographic image captured by the camera is the real object itself. In contrast to plastic arts, cinema does not create eternity, it lets time unfold as it is without being corrupted.
Because Bazin thought that film was designed for the purpose of capturing uncorrupted reality, he didn’t like any editing that purposefully manipulated a found reality. Bazin acknowledged that montage was integral to the development of the “language of cinema,” but it came at the expense of its true, cinematic value; therefore, montage in his view should be kept to a minimum and used only when absolutely necessary. Otherwise, it should be replaced with long, unbroken shots, as seen in films made by directors with a more “neutral” style, like Orson Welles. Welles’ innovative one-takes used in Citizen Kane (1941), such as the famous shot below, refuse to break up the action and do not distort time, making them far superior in Bazin’s estimation to anything that could be achieved by the classical cut.
The other thing that was extremely important to Bazin was deep focus cinematography, where, like in the above example from Citizen Kane (or in the two stills below), all planes of the image (both the foreground and the background) are in focus at the same time. There are three reasons why Bazin preferred deep focus. The first has to do with the fact that, because deep focus is closer to how we actually see the world than the shallow focus we find in montage, it is superior in its realism. Second, deep focus forces the spectator to take on a more active role while watching, as they must choose what to focus on in the frame and help create the meaning of the image. Finally, deep focus makes ambiguity possible, matching the uncertainty that the spectator experiences when they try to interpret a film. Because Bazin favored longer shots (both in terms of being shot from a considerable distance from the object and taking up a lot of time duration-wise) accompanied by deep focus, he is often connected to the “open” form of cinema in which the spectator is thought of as a guest who is invited into the world of the film.
There are a multitude of films that strive to be “realistic,” but possibly the best example of cinematic realism in recent years is Blue is the Warmest Color (2013). A French art film that follows its main character Adèle as she finds herself through sexual awakening and loss, Blue can best be described as an epic coming-of-age story. The film premiered at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the prestigious Palme d’Or and initially received widespread acclaim from the international film community, who praised the film for its unwavering commitment to realism and to its lead character. I find myself in agreement with the Cannes jury; upon seeing Blue for the first time, I remember thinking it was the most wholesome depiction of love and lust I had ever seen on screen. What I find most interesting about Blue though, is that while it is a film renowned as being incredibly realistic, it both does and does not conform to André Bazin’s theory of realism in cinema. Several salient aspects of the film exude a strong sense of realism including: the largely improvised script that enables the characters to engage in normal, everyday-sounding conversations, the various natural lighting sources that are used, the long, drawn out scenes that are allowed to unfold mostly in real time, the jumping forward in time in the narrative without disclosing how much time has passed to the audience, the deglamorized makeup and hairstyling, and the lack of any non-diegetic music/score save for one or two scenes. All of these are things that Bazin would probably applaud for being realistic, but where the film diverges away from Bazin’s concept of realism is in its cinematography.
Unlike many films, Blue is shot almost exclusively using a handheld camera, giving it a documentary feel. Though Bazin did not comment on what type of camera he preferred in his essay, it is reasonable to assume that, given his preference for longer shots where the camera could capture the reality of the world without the director interfering much, he would not think that a mobile, handheld camera would be very realistic. Along with the handheld format, the film is shot in shallow focus, with only the characters in the foreground being in focus in many of the shots. This directly violates another one of Bazin’s central tenets of cinematic realism, that of deep focus. Shooting in shallow focus is less like how we see the world compared to deep focus, but it has the effect of forcing the spectator to pay more attention to the characters since that is the only thing the camera allows them to focus on.
By far though, the most important cinematographic technique the film chooses to employ is its use of the close-up. I haven’t counted the exact number of shots, but I would estimate that at least 70% of the shots in the film are close-ups (or extreme close-ups) of characters’ faces. Most of the time, it is Adèle’s face shown in these close-ups. The camera follows her everywhere, as if it were literally connected to her. Thus, the form of the film replicates how it wants us, as spectators, to feel- attached to Adèle. This, coupled with the incomparable performance of actress Adèle Exarchopoulos (which surely ranks amongst the best and most naturalistic in cinematic history), allows us to study Adèle closely and notice all of her visible emotions. Just by looking at what her eyes and face are communicating, we know everything that she is feeling without any dialogue being necessary. All of these close-ups make us feel much closer to Adèle than we are used to being with characters in other films, as we identify with her insecurities, desire, fulfillment, loneliness, and heartbreak. It may feel intrusive, even excruciating, at times, but that sense of vulnerable intimacy is necessary for empathizing with Adèle to the fullest extent possible. The film might best be read as an extended exercise in the power of the close-up, something that can only be accomplished through the medium of film. In such a reading, Blue owes less to André Bazin than it does to Béla Balázs, who articulated the first film theory of the close-up in 1924, believing it to be the most formidable tool at cinema’s disposal as it enables the spectator to see a part of him/herself in the character on screen as if peering into a mirror.
What Blue shows us is that realism can be intensely stylized and manipulated by the formal elements of a given film and still feel just as real, if not more so, than the “neutral” style of deep focus long takes that Bazin described in his traditional theory of realism. For Bazin, realism essentially just meant an uninterrupted, objective aesthetic that adheres as closely as possible to how people see the world, but realism has the capacity to go much deeper than that. I would argue that when people say that Blue is such a realistic film, what they really mean is that it is realistic in the way that it reveals the complete emotional honesty of Adèle to us. Thanks to its use of handheld, shallow focus close-ups, the film is able to express pure, undiluted feelings. The feeling of being intensely in love as a young adult. The feeling of being with another person who means the world to you. The feeling of losing someone who you would give anything to be with again. As human beings, these are feelings that we all recognize or have experienced before at one point or another in our lives, but words often fail to do them justice when we try to describe them. Cinema, as a series of visual images whose size can be enlarged by using zoom lenses or moving the camera closer to the person/object on screen, has the ability to evoke these feelings with truthfulness and genuine sincerity in such a way that no other artistic medium quite can, and films like Blue constitute an additional type of cinematic realism that, despite being previously unconsidered by André Bazin, are just as “real” as the neutral, deep focus long take style that his theory popularized.
I would be remiss if I didn’t briefly touch on the main topic of discourse surrounding this film: the sex scenes. Because these scenes are so graphic and long (they are about as close as you can get to unsimulated sex without actually being unsimulated), especially when compared to Hollywood films, many American viewers feel that they are gratuitous. Even for certain people who like the rest of the film, they have said that the sex scenes briefly took them out of the movie and didn’t fit in with the realism of the rest of the film. These complaints have led to the film often being equated with softcore pornography, and it has also been heavily criticized by many film critics who charge that its use of the male gaze during these scenes is distasteful. As conceived by Laura Mulvey in the 1970’s, “the gaze” in narrative films is gendered male, meaning that it is a reflection of the unconscious patriarchal ideology of society. What's more, the male gaze is inherently sadistic in the way that it always makes women the passive object of the camera’s line of sight. Even though I will fully acknowledge that a gaze is present in the film, I do not think that it operates in the same way that the male gaze, as described by Mulvey, does, and I believe that the inclusion of the sex scenes is necessary for maintaining the verisimilitude of the rest of the film.
When taken as a whole, Blue is comprised of a series of lingering moments. In the film, we are shown some of the most important ones in Adèle’s life (like when she first notices Emma while walking across the street), but the majority of scenes are just Adèle doing normal, ordinary things. We see Adèle as she is sleeping on a bench, eating spaghetti with her parents, taking a shower, doing creative writing, looking out the window on a bus, washing the dishes, and dancing during her birthday party, just to name a few. Most other films wouldn’t take the time to show us these moments, because they are extraneous scenes that have nothing to do with plot. With Blue though, the entire film is about Adèle (the original French title of the film translated to English is The Life of Adèle Chapters 1 and 2), and what these scenes accomplish is that they allow us to understand Adèle better as a character, as we can always see what she is doing and really get an all-encompassing picture of her life (which is also why the film is three hours long). This greatly contributes to the film’s sense of realism, because it makes us feel like we are watching a young woman’s life play out in real time, that just so happens to have been filmed and stitched together via editing.
The sex scenes operate in a similar manner. As previously mentioned, the film wants us to observe Adèle as much as possible, without any restrictions, so in that sense, it would feel like a cop-out if it didn’t let us see these sex scenes after it has shown us all of these other mundane acts in Adèle's day-to-day life. Though it may be uncomfortable, since we are not used to seeing sex scenes like this in cinema, these scenes do not make the film less realistic as some have said; rather, they add to the realism of the film. To be clear, this doesn’t mean that the sex scenes are necessarily realistic in accurately representing what lesbian sex is like (as the author of the graphic novel that this film is based on has taken issue with), but insofar as they let us see more of Adèle’s life and her subjective reality (subjective being the key word there), they are realistic. It’s also worth considering that these scenes, like the rest of the film, are shot primarily in tight close-up, which indicates that the goal of the sex scenes is the same as all of the other scenes- to bring the audience closer emotionally to Adèle.
Furthermore, the sex scenes serve an artistic purpose to the film’s narrative other than merely being an erotic spectacle. Though the four sex scenes, when taken altogether, make up less than 10% of the total film, they play a key role in context of helping us grasp who Adèle is as a character. Throughout the film, Adèle is shown to be someone who is driven by passion and her seeking of pleasure, such as in the way that she becomes a school teacher because she loves children or in the way that she devours her food when she is eating. That same passion is evident in Adèle’s lustful, carnal desire for Emma, which is an incredibly important part of their relationship dynamic (as evidenced by when Adèle tells Emma, “I want you. All the time. No one else.”). Thus, showing us these explicit, almost primal acts of Adèle making love is necessary in being able to understand both where she is coming from emotionally and why she is so infatuated with Emma. I can’t comment on the allegations Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux hurled at director Abdellatif Kechiche of what went on during the filming of these scenes, but what I will say is that personally, as a straight male, the experience of watching the sex scenes in this film is not at all like the experience of watching porn. Because the film asks me to identify emotionally with Adèle in every other scene, I’m not going to suddenly turn her into a fetishistic object just because I am watching her have sex. Yes, a gaze of the camera is visible in these scenes, but it is not like the gaze that Mulvey so vehemently condemned. Instead, it is a calm, warm, inviting gaze, demonstrating that the gaze is not always male and sadistic in the way Mulvey insisted it was.
Blue is the Warmest Color is pure cinema. Unafraid to push the boundaries of realism, it illustrates how powerful a film has the potential to be in getting us to feel for another person when it feels completely authentic and not a single moment throughout its runtime rings false emotionally. It’s a shame that the film seems destined to be unable to escape the cloud of controversy hanging over it, because it is much more than just “that one French movie with lesbian sex.” There is something so raw, so intimate, and so tender about Blue is the Warmest Color, it is staggeringly beautiful in its boldness and honesty. A work of art to the highest degree, it is a landmark achievement in world, queer, and realist cinema.