Podcast: Blue is the Color Before Midnight
Sunday, November 3, 2013 at 12:00PM 
Blue is the Warmest Color, the erotic French drama, has moviegoers and film bloggers talking. Hear what Katey, Joe, Nick and Nathaniel have to say about it in the new podcast (we held the conversation for a week to give more of you a chance to see it). We also revisit the trilogy capping Before Midnight starring screenwriter/actors Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke.
This week's podcast also features affectionate (?) sidebar shoutouts to acclaimed documentary Call Me Kuchu, cranky moviegoers and ushers, Disney's Frozen, John Cassavettes Faces, the Israeli drama Late Marriage, the Ridley Scott classic Thelma & Louise, Sarah Paulson & Queen Latifah, and movie characters we'd like to drop back in on.
You can listen at the bottom of the post or download it on iTunes. Join in the conversation in the comments.
Supplemental Reading / Listening:
Blue Is...-Nathaniel's review
These Sapphic Superstar tweets ... referenced in the podcast
Operation Kino - Nathaniel guest stars on Katey & Mister Patches's podcast. We're talking Dallas Buyers Club
Reader Comments (25)
I choose to believe that you all did this podcast in the nude.
Strong feelings on Before Midnight - I believed all of it, but it's interesting to hear from someone who didn't buy the next step in the series. I was completely surprised with where it went, but they both felt like parents at that age to me. I actually feel like this film could stand alone as an interesting moment in this couple's lives, but it's more fun with the context. Loved hearing you guys talk through this and Blue though. (Yay for Katey watching all three for the first time!)
BTW guys, Call Me Kuchu is available on Netflix for instant viewing.
peggy sue -- just *this* podcast?
re: Nick Davis
Say something, anything, about Jessica Lange in American Horror Story. You wanted her to gain a resurgence in the conscious of the public. She has and there's no commentary from you to be found anywhere. Say something, so I can rest easy at night.
Good podcast and wish there were nopt as many techical diffculties. Can't wait to see Blue is the Warmest Color and reay enjoyed Before Midnight. Will next week be Dallas Buyers Club/The Book Thief/Thor: The Dark World Podcast, next week looks perfect for Horror Story
sorry to disappoint y'all but we won't be discussing television shows on this podcast. I don't think Nick watches AHS (or much tv in general)
I'm with Nick on Before Midnight. Sunset was great, but this one didn't impress me (though I still enjoyed Delpy's acting quite a bit).
As to characters I'd like to see again, to see what they've been doing (that's a great final question) - loads of them of course - but the first ones who come to mind are Patty Clarkson's from Elegy, Gael Garcia Bernal's from No, Lizzy Caplan's from Bachelorette, and any of the Chris Eigeman creations from the Stillman/Baumbach films.
Is it weird that I totally agree with all of the criticisms that are made in this podcast, but I still think the film's a masterpiece? Like not even just that I love it or that I identify with it, but I genuinely think it's a brilliant movie. In a weird way it reminded me of Gone With The Wind, which is obviously a TOTALLY different movie, but they both feel so huge and messy and politically thorny that they're kind of connected in my head. Blue Is The Warmest Color is a movie that made me want to have a thousand conversations all at once, about sexual identity, about class, about French realist cinema, about affect, about ACTING (my god the acting in this movie...), about formalism and masculinity, about representational politics, about authorship and ownership, about spaces and faces and desire and feminism. It's not a perfect movie by any means, but I think it's a great one, in the most complete sense of that word.
Also that authorship discussion made me so unbelievably happy. That stuff is why I listen to this podcast. As useful as the auteur theory can be, it is quite reductive, and in some ways it runs the danger of turning film into a white man's medium, which at its heart I don't believe that film is. Maybe that's why I love actresses so much? Because actressing is the most visible intervention in the narrative of cinema? I don't know, and I'm sure Nick puts it better on his Best Actress project page anyway. But I think discussions like the one in this podcast are important, and they aren't had nearly enough.
Oh and it's Adèle Ex-ar-KOO-poh-luhs. Between that and Chiwetel Ejiofor, the red carpet is going to be a pronunciation bloodbath.
Alison Bechdel, KD Lang, Wendy & Lisa and Lea DeLaria must all be somewhere in the Sapphic Top 20.
Nick hasn't said a word about Lange's new found relevancy. I'm dying to know if he gives a shit. Maybe he doesn't and is solely sold out for Streep?
TB, that is a fantastic way to describe Blue, and any movie that grabs a hold of you. I felt similarly about The Master, which I didn't really even think I liked when I first saw it, but I could NOT stop thinking about it.
I agree that Midnight is 3rd on the trilogy for me. The moment we discover Jesse is with Celine and have kids felt like a moment below Linklater, who I love as a filmmaker. And that hotel scene felt tedious to the point I got cynical and just thought, 'They are really trying to launch Delpy into the awards race with this one.'. I still liked it, but a lot of it on the strength of its final 15 minutes when it felt like I knew these people again. Also didn't like Jesse's unseen ex-wife feeling like a villain in their conversations.
As for characters I want to see again. After seeing Mark Strong in that terrible AMC show and Edgar Ramirez still not yet breaking through, give me Zero Dark Thirty, the TV show with a mix of the people from the movie and some added people to cover the modern anti-terrorism missions, namely the drones controversy and the leaks from hacktivists and Edward Snowden. Since Homeland has dropped the ball in such a spectacular fashion, this has been on my mind.
Also, I am so curious what happened to those kids of The Bling Ring, besides Alexis Neiers (the Nikki/Emma Watson character who really did not like the film).
I absolutely adore Adéle. I can't stop thinking about it and I must have listened Lykke Li's song a hundred times. I didn't like the oyster scene either although I wasn't that surprised. French cinema is often seen as intellectual and super sophisticated but anyone who has seen a French comedy knows they're not particularly subtle.
I would die for Sarah Polley to drop back in on the characters from Take This Waltz.
That was a courageous podcast! You all just kept hanging in there.
I try to see things the way you guys do but being Greek I just find it weird that people can't pronounce Exarchopoulos. All I can say is, it's pronounced the way you see it :p
But I get (I try, at least) that in english those vowels can be read in a number of ways.
E-ks-a-r-k-o-p-oo-l-o-s. OK, that was for 10 year-olds but if it's helpful..
In Greek the "ch" would be read as "h" like in "hooker". But heavier than that.
I'm sure you were all dying for that analysis.
Also, Katey might be joking but there was actually a cover of a greek magazine "a disgusting gossip magazine" that featured photos from Blue Whatever with the title "Shocking lesbian propaganda". I am now a lesbian, obviously.
"Keep the tape running through the technical difficulties and cutouts. This is all part of the podcast to be presented as it really unfolds."
Very Kechiche of y'all.
@Mike in Canada: Yeah, I was listening to this and thinking 'We have either won the internet by having a podcast where even troubleshooting a Skype outage is entertaining or else our asses just needed to hit pause.' Don't answer.
@James T: I actually was hoping you'd say! I realized that ch never makes the English "ch" sound in any Greek word I could think of, but that didn't occur to me till later.
@3rtful: I'm going to wait to answer till you ask a third time in this thread. I love this worldview you have where absolutely anyone could drop out at any moment and become some kind of Streep-obsessed zombie who doesn't care about anything else anymore. Don't answer that, either. (I just haven't seen any of AHS.)
@CMG: I'd watch that Zero Dark Thirty show, but I still want to follow Guy Lodge's advice and recast Mariah Carey's character from Precious in the Chastain role: "Can we talk about the abuse that is happening in your compound?"
@Peggy Sue: I'm wearing whatever you want me to wear. (OK, Vivian, my name is Vivian...)
@TB: I'm happy for any movie that inspires people to love it this much. One of my favorite things about Blue is how many people have responded to it this way, even if it wasn't quite my experience.
@ScottC: Glad I'm not alone!
I feel like the world would be a better place if there was the chance someone could turn into a Streep zombie at any moment. At the very least there'd be more people to talk about Postcards From The Edge with me.
@TB: Count on me, sister, count on me.
Nick Davis- Ha! I will just assume that Chastain would be too busy to do a weekly TV series even if I'd personally prefer that situation (I remember liking her in the role more than most on the site). I'd just let Jessica Collins assume the role as the all too eager female lead, aka the young CIA person who sucked up to Maya in the movie and was already in a similar role on the TV show Rubicon.
TB- I love that part of a moviegoing experience where you can get swept up in it even with understanding the flaws or certain lacking the film has. I noticed this with myself after a couple of days in seeing 12 Years a Slave. Still not sure it is in my Top Ten (which is going to look bananas, so forewarning y'all when it becomes list-o-mania in December) but the more I think about it, the more I forgive some of my issues with it and think the movie is a really special cinematic achievement.
I maintain that Inception would've been better as a 70 episode television.
Russell and Glenn from Weekend are the characters I want to revisit the most. The combination of the personal and political, to me, convinces me it would be hugely fascinating to revisit repeatedly over the upcoming decades just to see how the shifting landscape changes them.
I genuinely feared you guys we're getting abducted when that buzzing sound started by the end of the podcast!
I would love to drop-in on Vinny and Mona Lisa Veto (Joe Pesci and Maria Tomei) 10 years later from MY COUSIN VINNY.
How fun would that be? Despite all their zingers and verbal sparring I found them so endearing to each other underneath it all.
Can't believe that Hollywood never tried to ruin that movie with a sequel :)
Nick, I was totally miffed at the universal love for Before Midnight. I liked it, but didn't think it held a candle to Before Sunset.