Blue Is the Warmest Color (comics)

Blue Is the Warmest Color (Le bleu est une couleur chaude)
Original cover of the English-language edition
Date	March 2010
Page count	160 pages
Publisher	Glénat
Creative team
Creator	Julie Maroh
Original publication
Date of publication	March 2010
Language	French
ISBN
Translation
Publisher	Arsenal Pulp Press
Date	2013
ISBN

Blue Is the Warmest Color (Le bleu est une couleur chaude) (originally announced as Blue Angel) is a French graphic novel by Julie Maroh, published by Glénat in March 2010. The English-language edition was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2013. The novel tells a love story between two young women in France at the end of the 1990s. Abdelatif Kechiche directed a film adaptation in 2013, titled Blue Is the Warmest Colour, which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

The story takes place in France at the beginning of the new millennium, between the years of 1994 and 2008. After the death of her partner Clémentine, Emma goes to the home of Clémentine's parents, in accordance with Clémentine's will, to request access to Clémentine's personal diary. Emma must face the hostility of Clémentine's father—somewhat off-set by Clementine's welcoming mother. The story then follows Emma as she reads Clémentine's diary, which tells the whole story of the relationship between the two young women from Clémentine's teenage years and her first meeting with Emma to her untimely death. In the beginning, Clémentine meets a boy who is a student in Terminale; both like each other, but soon afterwards, Clémentine becomes intrigued by a chance meeting with a blue-haired young woman on the arm of another woman named Sabine. For Clémentine, it is love at first sight. Unable to forget this encounter she starts to have doubts about her sexuality—but decides to date the boy because she wants to feel normal. Six months later, however, Clémentine is unable to have sex with that boy and breaks up with him. Feeling depressed, she is helped by one of her male friends, Valentin, to whom she confesses everything; Valentin tells her that he has already dated a boy, which Clémentine finds quite comforting.

Shortly thereafter, Valentin takes Clémentine to some gay bars. During that evening at a lesbian bar Clémentine sees the blue-haired young woman again with Sabine. The blue-haired girl comes to talk to Clémentine and introduces herself as Emma. The two keep in touch and become friends, while Clémentine secretly falls in love with Emma. Clémentine then has to face the gossip and homophobic rants from some of her schoolmates when they hear that she and Emma were in a gay bar together. Some time later, while the relationship between Emma and Sabine has somewhat stalled (mainly because Sabine is often cheating on her friends) Clémentine eventually confesses her feelings to Emma, who confesses, in turn, to being in love with her. The girls have sex and start an affair. Emma eventually finds the strength to break up with Sabine and to start living with Clémentine. One night, when the two young women spend the evening together at Clémentine's place, Emma walks into the kitchen completely naked to get a glass of milk and Clémentine's mother catches her. Clémentine's parents then find both of them nude in the bedroom and their reaction is violently hostile: Clémentine is thrown out of her home, along with Emma.