Kurt Loder Reviews Blue Is the Warmest Color and The Counselor
A great film from France and a Ridley Scott misfire.
Blue Is the Warmest Color arrives trailing clouds of buzz from this year's Cannes Film Festival, where even the French were agog at the movie's extended lesbian sex scenes. It's true that these scenes are unusually graphic—only millimeters away from full-on porn (thus the picture's NC-17 rating). But, Kurt Loder believes the movie is more than just rote groan-and-grind. It's a love story with a deep emotional charge. The Counselor, by contrast, takes major talent and creates from them something dull and jumbled.