I'm busting out the blog again in order to discuss my favourite 10 days of the year (TIFF) which set off and shape my favourite singular day of the year (the Oscars).
The film is a 3 hour love story between 2 young women that spans the better part of a decade. We meet Adele when she is still in high school, and clearly uncomfortable with herself. She is beautiful (I think a spitting image of Angelina Jolie as a teenager) and her friends tease her about it, pressuring her to date a cute guy at school. She does, reluctantly, wanting to prove to her friends and herself that she is a "normal" teenage girl. On her way to her first date with this guy from school she has a "love at first sight" moment passing by Emma, an older, cooler, artsy woman with blue hair. This moment becomes her sexual identity unraveling. In the brief moment on screen, you can tell that it undoes her in every way. Eventually, Adele manages to find Emma again by "wandering" purposely into a "dyke" bar-their meeting is electrifying. They only speak for a few minutes, but long enough for Emma to find out where Adele goes to high school. Emma eventually goes to Adele's school to find her, which culminates in an intensely homophobic confrontation between Adele and her group of girl friends.
The film continues from there and explores the relationship between the two young women--the beginning, the middle, and the end--including the sexual awakening Adele experiences with Emma. The sex scene between them lasts a good 10 minutes in the film and is probably the most intensely realistic lesbian sex ever captured on film (also the reason the film has gotten a lot of buzz). How these two actresses were able to do this on film is beyond me-it is so intimate and private and requires so much trust, I really honestly don't know how they filmed this.
During the Q and A period after the film, someone asked about how they could reach this level of intimacy with one another, and the actress who played Adele talked about how it wasn't really acting-they just lost themselves in it. When you see it, you'll know what she means. It is impossible to not believe that these women love each other, both in the film, and in person. It's a beautiful thing to see.
The relationship between Adele and Emma reminded me a lot of the Dionne Brand long poem I wrote my Master's thesis on. The poem is Brand's coming out in writing; she talks about her first female lover and how that experience will never leave you. One of my favourite lines from the poem that has always stuck with me is: "Someone said, this is your first lover, you will never want to leave her." This film is a perfect representation of that sentiment.
As usual, I am seeing a minimum of 10 movies (and perhaps one or 2 more if the Rush tickets gods treat me well). I have effectively dropped out of my last year of law school for the next 10 days. That's okay right?
The first film I saw this year was the much anticipated "Blue is the Warmest Colour" which won the highest honour (Palme D'Or) at the Cannes film festival this year. The award wasn't given to just the the film, but collectively to the two lead actresses as well, which I believe has never been done before. After seeing the film last night, I understand why the committee made this choice. The acting is some of the best I've ever seen. I actually hesitate to call it "acting" because it is so genuine and honest, that you get lost in these 2 women's performances. The conversations they have, the sex, the tenderness, everything that happens between them seems like the least scripted thing ever.
The film is a 3 hour love story between 2 young women that spans the better part of a decade. We meet Adele when she is still in high school, and clearly uncomfortable with herself. She is beautiful (I think a spitting image of Angelina Jolie as a teenager) and her friends tease her about it, pressuring her to date a cute guy at school. She does, reluctantly, wanting to prove to her friends and herself that she is a "normal" teenage girl. On her way to her first date with this guy from school she has a "love at first sight" moment passing by Emma, an older, cooler, artsy woman with blue hair. This moment becomes her sexual identity unraveling. In the brief moment on screen, you can tell that it undoes her in every way. Eventually, Adele manages to find Emma again by "wandering" purposely into a "dyke" bar-their meeting is electrifying. They only speak for a few minutes, but long enough for Emma to find out where Adele goes to high school. Emma eventually goes to Adele's school to find her, which culminates in an intensely homophobic confrontation between Adele and her group of girl friends.
The film continues from there and explores the relationship between the two young women--the beginning, the middle, and the end--including the sexual awakening Adele experiences with Emma. The sex scene between them lasts a good 10 minutes in the film and is probably the most intensely realistic lesbian sex ever captured on film (also the reason the film has gotten a lot of buzz). How these two actresses were able to do this on film is beyond me-it is so intimate and private and requires so much trust, I really honestly don't know how they filmed this.
During the Q and A period after the film, someone asked about how they could reach this level of intimacy with one another, and the actress who played Adele talked about how it wasn't really acting-they just lost themselves in it. When you see it, you'll know what she means. It is impossible to not believe that these women love each other, both in the film, and in person. It's a beautiful thing to see.
The relationship between Adele and Emma reminded me a lot of the Dionne Brand long poem I wrote my Master's thesis on. The poem is Brand's coming out in writing; she talks about her first female lover and how that experience will never leave you. One of my favourite lines from the poem that has always stuck with me is: "Someone said, this is your first lover, you will never want to leave her." This film is a perfect representation of that sentiment.
I wrote quickly on facebook last night after getting home from the viewing that the movie was "one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful films I've seen in a long time. It tenderly shows the all encompassing pain and pleasure of falling in love for the first time, and what it is to find in someone else what it feels like to belong, when you didn't know that feeling existed."
I still feel that way. The film was beautiful, and didn't feel 3 hours long. See it, even if it feels like you've been through heartbreak and a breakup at the end of the film. Sometimes that can be therapeutic.
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