Last night was ‘gay night’ the whole world over. What; you didn’t know? Shameful. There was a choice. You could go and buy Morrissey’s autobiography which came out yesterday and learn all about the whining Mancunian’s sordid little life, all written in an horrendously nasal, adenoidy and northern way, or you could go and see Blue is the Warmest Colour at the Curzon Mayfair.

People often say about a movie; ‘its not as good as the book’, though normally, granted, that’ll be the book about the film, not about something other. Well watching a 3 hour long French movie, with subtitles (for those of ‘you’ insufficient in that beautiful language that you need them), you get both. Its long enough that you could read the bloody book, but movie enough that you’re actually doing both at once. Perfect.

Yet 3 hours. That’s a long film. That’s nearly half of Seven Samurai. Without any swords (literal or euphemistic, as it ‘appens). You really need to be a serious art-house junky or an up-market pervert. And I’m not prepared to be ‘labelled’ by you.

I’d like to state from the start that if I was a French woman I would definitely be a lesbian. French men (other than David Ginola; Spurs and L’Oriel’s finest) are a waste of time and space and are all Gallic and smelly. Whereas French women are divine. All of them.

The film is a love story. A very long and very loving story about a young girl unsure of her sexuality, thus confused, sad and, fortunately for us, prepared to experiment to find her true place in the world. Which was, for quite a long time, between the thighs of another young girl. I would say ‘both are totally babelicious’ but that trivialises it and might detract from the point of the film. It certainly did whilst watching it.

The film became famous because the actresses bemoaned the director for having them spend whole days on set naked, and for sex scenes which, if I’m honest (something I try never to be) transcend ‘plot’ and merge into ‘pornography’. As if that’s some sort of problem. The scenes are so long and so realistic you can actually smell the Gouloises. They don’t need subtitles for the sex scenes because there’s so much flesh on the screen they’d look like tattoos. Its filmed big. And close.

But they don’t show porn at fancy little independent cinemas filled with middle-class film buffs. So you’re safe.

And the movie is emotional. Really emotional. If the eskimos have 50 words for ‘snow’, the French must have 900 expressions for ‘emotion’. We Brits don’t, we have a nice cuppa tea instead. But them Frenchies, wow, do they emote? And in France snot is apparently a significant by-product of emotion.

The film is fantastic. Sadly no guns are involved, no shoot-ups or car chases and very few zombies. But it is very classy, very French, wonderfully elegant and powerfully watchable. Three hours goes by in… in… well, in about 3 hours. But a fantastically gripping 3 hours. The finest accolade for any movie is if Mel stays awake. And she did. Unlike in Pulp Fiction and so many others.

The film is released soon, last night was a London Film Festival gig. But it won’t be shown on Screen 1 of the local multiplex. If you live north of Stanmore it won’t be shown at all. They’ll ban it in Yorkshire altogether.

Its brilliant. And very naughty. And I’m not prepared to say which is more important.

 

Happy Friday, may your sexuality be assured and your thighs soft yet firm.

 

A xxxx