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On this week’s episode, the critics discuss the Palme d’Or-winning film Blue is the Warmest Color. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, the film follows Adele, an aspiring teacher in Lille, and her sexual awakening with Emma, an art student-cum-sophisticate. With guest Bryan Lowder, assistant editor of Slate’s Outward blog, the critics discuss the film’s depiction of lesbian sex, its fidelity to the graphic novel on which it was based, and the flurry of post-production controversy that surrounded its American release. Next, in keeping with the day’s Francophilia, the critics discuss The Returned, a macabre French TV show, now airing on the Sundance Network. Can American television viewers embrace the pouty languor of this French drama? Can we learn to love TV with subtitles? And finally, the gabbers welcome Claudia Roth-Pierpont, New Yorker staff writer and the author of Roth Unbound, a new book about Philip Roth’s prolific and polarizing career.

Links to some of the things we discussed this week follow:

• Dana’s review of Blue is the Warmest Color on Slate
• June’s analysis of the film’s post-production controversies
• Manohla Dargis’ New York Times op-ed about the film
• Blue is the Warmest Color, a graphic novel by Julie Maroh
• Willa Paskin’s review of The Returned on Slate
• Danish political TV drama Borgen
• Roth Unbound
• Claudia Roth-Pierpont’s recent New Yorker essay on Philip Roth’s friendships
• The Ghost Writer
• The Plot Against America
• American Pastoral
• Operation Shylock
• Portnoy’s Complaint
• I Married a Communist
• Sabbath’s Theater
• Nemesis
• Indignation
• Ravelstein by Saul Bellow

Endorsements:

Dana: Patti Smith’s tribute to Lou Reed in The New Yorker

June: BBC Radio 4’s General Knowledge Quizzes, especially the fiendish and cryptic Round Britain Quiz

Steve: The Fall, an Irish-British crime drama starring Gillian Anderson, now streaming on Netflix

Outro: “Hier Encore” by Charles Aznavour

You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.

This podcast was produced by Sally Herships. Our intern is Anna Shechtman.

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