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I don’t know the sources of information for the director and the actresses (who are all straight, unless proven otherwise) and I was never consulted upstream. Maybe there was someone there to awkwardly imitate the possible positions with their hands, and/or to show them some porn of so-called “lesbians” (unfortunately it’s hardly ever actually for a lesbian audience). Because—except for a few passages—this is all that it brings to my mind: a brutal and surgical display, exuberant and cold, of so-called lesbian sex, which turned into porn, and made me feel very ill at ease.I think I read this as well as a couple of reports from Cannes at the time, but it no way deterred me from crossing the days off my calendar in eager anticipation of the movies stateside release. (First of all, what's wrong with porn?!) I just chalked up all the smack talk to puritanical views of sexual displays between women. (At this time, I really wasn't thinking about the fact that Julie Maroh was the author of the work on which the movie was based and the only lesbian involved in any of it.) And because once I've made up my mind to see something, I generally put all the kibitzing away so that I can watch without too much prejudice. So, fast forward to the present.
I tried to put any negative preconceptions aside--if anything, I think I was predisposed to like the film, and really, I did...sort of. Most of the reviews have centered around the lengthy sex scene, and I'll get there, but I want to talk about some other things first, and yeah, there will be SPOILERS. So, first of all, the movie is THREE HOURS long. I really appreciated the way the director let the camera linger in that oh-so-foreign-filmy-indie way, but after awhile, I was like, Um, I really don't need to watch Adele sleeping or shoving spaghetti in her maw any more. Tighten this shit up!
And I also had issues with how the film conveyed the passage of time--which was not at all. There was one really big jump, but the viewer doesn't know how much time has past. Adele looks exactly the same, with the same messy up-do for the whole movie. Once I found out that there was no hair and makeup crew on set I understood why. The director said that he paid 1.5 million euros out of his own pocket to spend an extra month (shooting nekkid scenes I guess), but didn't budget for hair and makeup? Hmmm...
And now we get to the lesbian feels portion...and I am going to do something that any legitimate reviewer would not do. I'm going to compare the movie to the graphic novel. Julie Maroh graciously said in the aforementioned blog post, "Sure, to me it seems far away from my own method of creation and representation, but it would be very silly of me to reject something on the pretext that it's different from my own vision." While I understand that the book and film are each their own work of art to be judged independently, I make the comparison because I feel like the graphic novel has elements that the book was lacking and really would have benefited from. A lot of times when I watch a film and something doesn't seem quite right, I wonder if there was some key element left on the cutting room floor. But the guy had THREE HOURS to tell his story, and the graphic novel was only 160 pages, so, you'd think that he could've gotten it all in there. But, yeah, I had that nagging feeling as I was leaving the theater and I ran out and got the book and yes, SO MANY THINGS MADE MORE SENSE.
Apparently, the director, Abdellatif Kechiche is a big deal in France and both Julie Maroh and one of the lead actresses, Lea Seydoux spent a ton of time talking to him about the project pre-shoot, so everyone must have been okay with his vision, but me, not so much. The plot is so much richer in the graphic novel and if Kechiche had kept in the part about the two being found in flagrante and Adele thrown out of the house, it would have made what came after so much clearer and more poignant. Not to mention the whole
I think some (maybe most, definitely not all) of my disappointment, came from the fact that I'm a gay lady and the graphic novel is by a gay lady and I resonate more with her vision--that of the anguished gay teen coming to grips with trying to be 'normal' and making out with your 'girl' friend and getting rejected, meeting your first love and being ostracized from friends and family (y'know, that gay story). The film is by a straight dude who employed straight ladies to execute his vision of exploring the devastation of first love lost. The gay element, as it were, in the film was more a canvas from which to work than a key plot point. The actresses did very little, if any, research on the lesbian perspective (their admission, not my assertion). And I would say to those who think this is an appropriate way for an actress to work given that they are playing inexperienced baby dykes...Uh, no, that makes no sense. If the actresses were gay but for some reason had no real-life experiences to draw from and were playing inexperienced lesbians...maybe? Some people seem to think that we are living in a post-gay world where there is no such thing as 'gay'; hence, there would be no merit in talking to actual gay folks about their experiences in order to play a gay person. "Adele, isn't 'gay'. She's just a women who happens to fall in love with a woman." I call bullshit. This is SUCH A COP OUT. I'm sure this is the case for some people, but since the graphic novel is very rooted in the coming out paradigm, I feel that scrubbing out that aspect from the film was, frankly, insulting. [Side note: in the film Adele has sex with her boyfriend, but in the book she gets skeeved out and goes home in the middle of the night.] I could go on and on about this...
So, I feel like I should say a word about the much discussed, maligned, vaunted sex scene....but really, what more can be said? I agree with this Daily Beast reviewer's assessment. It was too long. The way it was shot made one (me?) feel uncomfortable as we are placed in the position of voyeur. The women are on display for us as opposed to us feeling like we are immersed in the story...if that makes sense. [Side note: in the novel, the main character's name is Clementine, in the film, the director changed it to Adele. Creepy, no? Seems like that guy has poor boundaries.] I don't feel like it's necessarily a fact that a man can't accurately and sympathetically capture lesbian sexuality on film, this just happens to be a case where the attempt failed. In my opinion. And I think the above review, as well as Julie Maroh's statement, mirrored my own feelings perfectly.
I feel that some of my recent research on feminist pornography intersects with this conversation. One of the aspects that makes something 'feminist porn' is good working conditions and best labor practices, and I don't think that it is unimportant to note that the actresses felt exploited and tortured (not the Guantanamo kind) during the ten days spent shooting what ended up as a 7 minute sex scene. Naked, wearing merkhins and faking orgasms for ten days--it sounded physically trying and psychologically awful. Much ink has been spilled over the feud between the actresses and the director and I'm not going to get into it, suffice it to say, I think that it is probably one of the reasons why the scene plays cold and 'clinical' to some people--me among them. The actresses were miserable and felt like 'prostitutes'. I'm not just a gay lady who likes to see ladies make out with each other, I want them to like it! Or, y'know, at least do a good job pretending they do, and certainly not feeling horrible about it. That just makes me feel badly. I didn't really know about the whole back story before I watched the film, I just knew that the scene didn't work for me. And once I read/watched copious interviews, I had an idea why. (Although, perhaps it was due to the fact that I was at a theater surrounded by old, straight people whilst watching two women going down on each other and scissoring like porn stars--and not the good porn stars!)[Edit: I just want to be really clear that the issues I have with the scene are not about any particular act being shown. It's not about whether they are scissoring, fisting, whateveh. The scene should be judged as part of this film. Does it work for the film? Is it in keeping with the characters? Etc. These are the questions from which I am critiquing the scene and the film as a whole.]
As a final note, I just want to say that, really, the performances were wonderful--especially that of Adele Exarchopoulos. The camera hardly leaves her for three hours, and although, yes, I think it could benefit from some editing, I was quite smitten. And certainly, one of the most fun things about this film is all of the discussions that it engenders, so what do you think?
