The really remarkable thing about Blue is the Warmest Colour is that it turned out so beautifully given the conditions under which it was reportedly made:

[Director Abdellatif Kechiche] was always searching, because he didn’t really know what he wanted. We spent weeks shooting scenes. Even crossing the street was difficult. In the first scene where we cross paths and it’s love at first sight, it’s only about thirty seconds long, but we spent the whole day shooting it—over 100 takes. By the end of it, I remember I was dizzy and couldn’t even sit. And by the end of it, [Kechiche] burst into a rage because after 100 takes I walked by Adele and laughed a little bit, because we had been walking by each other doing this stare-down scene all day. It was so, so funny. And [Kechiche] became so crazy that he picked up the little monitor he was viewing it through and threw it into the street, screaming, “I can’t work under these conditions!”

And that’s the least upsetting story at that link. I don’t get as angry about men who put beautiful women in their films or even men who seem to be playing out their fantasies through their scripts using actors as puppets as I do about men who are truly abusive to the actresses in their films. If you can’t get a great performance from the great performer you hired without putting them through torture — unless they’ve asked for it — you’re not a great director.

I still think this is a very good film, but I’m giving the credit for that to its cast.