Starring Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux. In French with English subtitles. Rated R.

Based on a (very) graphic novel by Julie Maroh called Le Bleu est une couleur chaude, one of this much-ballyhooed new movie’s English titles is Adele: Chapters 1 & 2. That gives a better notion of its intended scope, since 179 minutes are spent covering roughly five years in the quasi-maturation of a youngster of that name, played by Adèle Exarchopoulos.

Your personal sense of endurance will be determined by how closely your devotion to the lead’s pretty face (all puffy lips and frequently crying eyes) matches that of writer-director Abdellatif Kechiche. Adele, who initially identifies as a straight high-school junior in a provincial French town, finds her life changing when she meets Emma (rising star Léa Seydoux), a blue-haired lesbian painter a few years older who gets Adele’s motor running in another direction.

I’m not sure what’s more shocking to North American viewers: the long sex scenes (which sometimes have a Popular Mechanics tinge) or the equally labour-intensive conversations that French high-school students have about literature. Anyway, the gals bond—they fuck, fight, and eat a lot of spaghetti, usually while smoking their brains out.

Over time, Emma starts getting shows, and Adèle pursues her mundane plans as a teacher but seems too consumed by the relationship to develop new skills, friendships, or insights. It’s not clear why nothing comes of her earlier interests, and we don’t know if this monomania is a personal failing or due to Kechiche’s disdain for character development and subplot.

The beautifully acted film owes a lot to François Truffaut—both the tenderly kid-centric director of Small Change and the bullying maître of another obsessive Adèle, in The Story of Adele H. In fact, the two leads and Maroh have been slamming Kechiche for his tyrannical, borderline-pornographic usage of them and the material. It’s not that simple, but I do wish that after three hours I could have walked away knowing as much about their thoughts as I do about their skin.