La Vie d’Adèle : un roman d’apprentissage mélodramatique

This article demonstrates with which cinematographic processes, the film Blue is The Warmest Color shapes an aesthetic of excess that depicts emotions on the characters’ bodies but also on the spectators’bodies. Director Abdellatif Kechiche articulates several cinema genres that share a strong emotive charge. First melodrama, also known as a tear-jerker, and secondly coming of age, another category of films devoted to the passage from teenage years to adulthood. In Blue is the Warmest Color, these experiences deal with the first love and the confrontation of new feelings. In addition to that, I will study the very graphic, long and explicit sex scenes, to identify their status, their role and their impact on the audience. Thus, I will consider how the 2013 Palme d’Or corresponds to what Linda Williams calls « body films », that is to say a category of films characterized by their excessive style. This article transfers concepts coming from literary criticism – melodrama, coming of age, myths – to the cinematographic field, showing their relevance but also their limits.