We can’t even keep score with the back and forth between “Blue Is The Warmest Color” director Abdellatif Kechiche, and the stars of the Cannes Palme d’Or winning film, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos. While they may have all been smiles and hugs on the Croisette, in the run up to the film’s release this fall both in France and the U.S., bitter feelings have risen to the surface. The actresses have been very vocal about why felt was an unbearable shoot, while Kechiche has gone so far as to suggest the movie shouldn’t be released at all. And the battle of wills continues.
Speaking with The Independent, Seydoux has again been open about her experience on the movie, and in particular, the much talked about, lengthy and explicit sex scene which has helped earn “Blue Is The Warmest Color” an NC-17 rating. “Of course it was kind of humiliating sometimes, I was feeling like a prostitute. Of course, he uses that sometimes. He was using three cameras, and when you have to fake your orgasm for six hours…,” the actress said. “I can’t say that it was nothing. But for me it is more difficult to show my feelings than my body.”
But is there a line she wouldn’t cross? “Yes, cunnilingus!” the actress laughed. “We had fake pussies on. You have something to protect and tape it under. I don’t make love on screen. We can fake these things, you can’t fake feelings, but you can fake body language.”
But for this part, the director defends his methods, which require multiple takes and sometimes excruciating sessions trying to get it right. “Concerning the love scenes, I didn’t ask for anything other than the expression of a form of passion. I felt like showing this carnal and passionate love, entirely guided by desire. From a purely aesthetic point of view, that it was based around two women was entirely okay by me, but I also did plan to shoot a scene with three people, with Adele and two men, which I didn’t film,” he told CineObs, admitting that he would’ve preferred to take it further.
“For me, the scenes as they are in the film don’t go far enough. It’s true that we did start them over often, but for very evident reason. I couldn’t ask Adele and Lea to make desire last, they had to want to do the scene,” he continued. “It’s like the meal in ‘The Secret Of The Grain‘ that I filmed many times. We filmed until the actors weren’t hungry anymore and then we filmed the next day.”
Still, Seydoux does offer an olive branch, conceding that the result is a movie that is by many accounts (including ours) a resonant and powerful piece of work. “It’s not because you do 300 takes you’re a genius—that is just his method,” Seydoux said. “I, for example, don’t like to do too many takes. If I do too many takes, I’m too self-conscious. I think I’m better in first scenes. With Abdellatif, I knew that he was going to film 100 takes. Sometimes I would come in and say, ‘I don’t give a shit’ because I knew that he would get what he wanted. I think the result is what is important. I think it’s a beautiful result and beautiful film, I want to do beautiful films and it’s not about me.”
So with that in mind, be sure to see “Blue Is The Warmest Color” when it opens on October 25th. New pics below.
