Cannes Flashback: When Léa and Adèle Turned the Cannes Jury Blue
The names of French actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos will be forever intertwined in the Cannes record book, so it is serendipitous that both are returning to this year’s festival. Back in 2013, they starred in director Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Color, playing young women who share a sexually charged relationship. The film was an immediate sensation. Said THR critic Jordan Mintzer, “Sure to raise eyebrows with its showstopping scenes of unsimulated female copulation, the film is actually much more than that: It’s a passionate, poignantly handled love story.”
Some handicappers thought it might prove too risqué for that year’s jury, headed by Steven Spielberg, but the jury stunned at the closing night ceremony by not only awarding the film the Palme d’Or, but by also taking what it called “the exceptional step” of declaring that the honor should be shared by the director and his two leads. At the press conference that followed, Exarchopoulos said of Blue: “It’s universal. It’s a love story. If it’s also a hymn to tolerance, then that’s all the more gratifying.” Added Seydoux, “What brought us together was the love that existed between us, and perhaps our sense of humor.”
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There’s a good chance the two will bump into each other on this year’s red carpet. Exarchopoulos stars in Jeanne Herry’s French drama Another Day, screening in competition. Seydoux appears in two competition titles: Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster, also featuring Catherine Deneuve, and Arthur Harari’s The Unknown, a Neon pickup about a man who after a one-night stand wakes up in the body of the woman he seduced.
