Director Abdellatif Kechiche with actresses Adele Exarchopoulos (left) and Lea Seydoux on the red carpet for the screening of La Vie d’Adele, in competition during the 66th Cannes Film Festival. Photo: Reuters

An intimate love story between two young women received rave reviews from critics at the Cannes Film Festival despite explicit sex scenes that could limit the film’s distribution.

La Vie d’Adele – Chapitre 1 & 2 (Blue is the Warmest Colour) is a poignant tale of love and sexuality centred on 15-year-old Adele, in a breakout performance by Adele Exarchopoulos, and her lover Emma (Lea Seydoux).

The film’s explicit sex and three-hour running time have made it one of the most talked-about films of the 20 vying for the top Palme d’Or prize at the festival that wraps up tomorrow. It is French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche’s first film at Cannes.

Kaya Burgess of The London Times called it “one of the most beautifully and unobtrusively observed love stories I’ve seen on film”.

Hollywood Reporter’s Jordan Mintzer wrote: “Surely to raise eyebrows but the film is actually a passionate, poignantly handled love story.”

Kechiche told journalists it was not his intention to make a film about gay rights, in the context of the debate over same-sex marriage which was legalised in France this month, and said the depictions of sex were aimed at depicting beauty.

We hope that in the scenes the idea of beauty will emerge

“We hope that in the scenes the idea of beauty will emerge. I think sensuality is more difficult to film and capture on-screen,” he said.

A quieter offering in the main competition is Nebraska from US director Alexander Payne, whose About Schmidt competed for the prize in 2002.

The father-son road trip, starring Bruce Dern and Will Forte, is shot in black and white with a quirky, homey sensibility. The film about family, old age and dreams follows a curmudgeonly father who believes he has won $1 million after receiving a sweepstakes flyer telling him he’s a winner.

Early reviews were mixed, with some criticising a formulaic plot and others praising the film’s quiet, melancholic tone.

Veteran actor Dern, who began working in films in the 1960s, said it took eight years for the film to see the light of day.

“That gave me melancholy alone,” he said. “Waiting for eight years.”