Has anyone seen Blue is the Warmest Color? During my last semester of college, I took a film class in which we watched some pretty unique and foreign movies. I never cared too much about movies until I was exposed to other elements about film in general. You know, the “cinematography.”

It follows a 15 year old named Adéle and her love life throughout her early 20s. A handsome guy from her high school seems to fall for her pretty hard, but that one sided romance is soon interrupted by a blue haired girl that Adéle eyes in the street. They eventually cross paths again at a bar, where Emma, the blue haired babe, is with her friends and girlfriend. That’s all you need to know, really. Besides the fact that the French create their films in an entirely different way than we do, and that the movie is NC-17. You’ve been warned.

Food continues to be an incredibly important factor throughout the whole movie. One of the first scenes in the three hour long film is Adele eating this succulent looking pasta dish with her parents. Adéle doesn’t really seem to have many table manners. She chews with her mouth wide open, she talks with food in her mouth. And believe me, I am definitely one of those who cringes at the noise coming from a loud chewer. But I COULD NOT help but watch Adéle. Maybe it was because the frames are so close to her mouth, but her mannerisms symbolize something deeper.

Some people would probably say “Oh this just symbolizes her love and adoration for Emma.” I have to disagree. The way Adéle devours her food, the way she hides a box of candy under her bed for those miserable, confusing, “I don’t know what my sexuality is” nights. It’s because she’s missing something from her life but doesn’t know what. So she fills that void with food. Who can blame her?

Enter Spaghetti Bolognese. It appears several times in the film, which makes it even more captivating, for me at least. The first time, Adéle is scarfing it down with her calm and collected parents. About half way through the movie, Adéle has Emma over for dinner and her dad makes…you guessed it. Bolognese. Adéle also meets Emma’s parents, but they eat oysters. Just a scene or two later, Adéle prepares the dish for a handful of Emma’s pretentious, artsy friends. Food also represents the fact that *SPOILER* their relationship won’t withstand the test of time. Oysters seem to come with an elegant and fancy manner about them, while pasta and tomatoes and relatively cheap. 

So because I feel like food is such an important factor in understanding their relationship, I decided to create a bolognese recipe on my own. Little did I know that my mom had been feeding me a very similar dish when I was little, and it’s still one of my favorite dishes she continues to make.

For this bolognese, I used a can of whole tomatoes crushed up with my hands. You can also use chopped tomatoes, but I like the rustic look of the whole ones. I kind of cheated and used some tomato sauce from a jar because it honestly looked like just some beef and tomatoes in a pot. But whatever it tasted awesome.

I used whole milk for this, but you can use whatever kind of milk you want. As for the wine, I didn’t plan on adding any, but I was drinking some as I was cooking this, so some just kind of happened to make it in the pot… It was Sauvignon Blanc, but as long as it’s dry, it will work.

It’s also not 100 percent necessary to let the sauce cook for a long time, but it will definitely benefit from it. Spaghetti sauce is one of those things that gets better the longer it cooks. So if you’re starving, take a ladle full from the pot but let the rest keep cooking. I’d say it needs at least 30 minutes though to let those flavors *develop.*

It’s here that the rest is up to you. Dump it on spaghetti. Freeze it. Share it.

All of this aside though, Blue is the Warmest Color shows us that food isn’t just an essential to living, it has the possibility to mean so much more. I think you should watch it make your own decision on what food symbolizes in the movie. Or if you think I’m over analyzing it. That’s possible too. Let me know in the comments!