Ask Mick: Sex scenes don't influence critics
By Mick LaSalle
DEAR MICK: I can't look at a picture of Adele Exarchopoulos without feeling moved. My wife and I saw "Blue is the Warmest Color," and her reaction was that the director must "get off" on watching women make love. I had mentioned that it was one of your top films of the year, and she said the same thing about you.— Bob Zander, Palo Alto
DEAR BOB: I think many women imagine men to be a lot more lust-ridden and sex-obsessed than they really are. I've read comments by women who've dwelled on the supposedly voyeuristic or eroticized way that Abdellatif Kechiche filmed Exarchopoulous from behind as she walked to the bus. Really? I didn't notice.
No one who sees "Blue is the Warmest Color" — at least no one who likes it — walks out thinking of it as a sex movie. Those sex scenes are shot in a way that intentionally keeps you distant from it, aware that you're seeing their passion, not yours. This is not "the male gaze," but intentional distance.
Now, I'm not going to tell you that I'm a corpse and find the spectacle of these women stomach-turning, but it's not some big moment for me. In any case, I'm not so pathetic or lonely — or grateful — that a movie can brainwash me into thinking it's a masterpiece by showing me a couple of naked girls. I would like to think readers might give me more credit than that, or at least more credit to the 94 percent of the top critics, male and female, who've endorsed this film, often in the highest terms.
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