The Eternal Feminine in "Blue is the Warmest Color"

While doing research for my group presentation on The Mad Women of TV, I have been reading Denise Russell's book, Women, Madness, and Medicine. In her chapter "Feminist Philosophies of Women and Madness," she talks about Luce Irigaray's theory on women's sexuality and madness. Russell paraphrases Irigaray saying that "identity is tied up with sexuality and that under patriarchy women's sexuality has been conceptualized under male terms" and is therefore repressed and silenced through the linguistic and logical process that structure thought (117). The idea of women's inability to express sexual pleasure and desire because of a patriarchal linguistic structure made me think about Blue is the Warmest Color, a movie I have yet to see but have read a handful of critical articles about. Namely, Manhola Dargis' article The Trouble with 'Blue is the Warmest Color', which articulates her issues about the film's so-called "progressive" sex scenes.

I started to think about the patriarchal system that the film industry has become and similar to Irigaray's thoughts on the inability for women to express sexuality in language, Blue is the Warmest Color is connected to the lack of filmic female sexual expression from a female point of view. Dargis' argument against Abdellatif Kechiche's European art film specifically discusses his male point of view and its influences on expressing female sexuality. She mentions Julie Maroh's (who wrote the graphic novel the movie is based) critique of there being no lesbians on set and elaborates this farther saying the movie lacks "women of any kind." She describes the protagonist's, Adele, sexual appetite as "contained, prettified, and aestheticized."

She goes on to say that "women's silence is deafening and, like the movie's sex scenes, punctures the movie's realism" describing a scene where a man basically mansplains (lol) that "'art by women never tackles female pleasure'" to a group of women who have nothing to say back to him (such as female artists were historically not allowed to work with nude models Dargis aptly points out). Her discussion of the film relates to the idea of a patriarchal system that has contained female expression through male-conceptualized language structures such as film. Kechiche's directorial expression of female sexuality is not invalid; it is an artist's statement. However, his gender and position should be taken into consideration regarding the aesthetic and narrative decisions made in depicting the characters and their lives. Irigaray's idea that sexuality has historically been conceptualized in male terms seems to stand true in cinema as well. The depiction of female sexuality in Blue is the Warmest Color must be considered for what it is: a European film director aching to explore the mystique of female sexuality, which, let's face it, isn't as mystical as they think it is.