In Eleonora Puglia’s Blue, one reckless choice turns a hidden romance into a downward spiral into exploitation. What starts as Luce protecting the boy she loves soon pulls her into a world where every escape route comes with an even steeper price.
Luce (Alexia Cozzi) is a smart college student from a comfortable family. Luce keeps her romance with Loris (Pierangelo Menci) mostly hidden, embarrassed to let her parents see how serious she is about a boy from a different part of town. He’s poor. Their relationship moves fast, from stolen make-out sessions to intimate afternoons by the lake. Around them, Luce’s school life is already wobbling—she is struggling in class, drifting from her parents, and drifting from her circle of friends.
As Luce sinks deeper in love with Loris, danger arrives without warning. A biker confronts her, and she learns Loris owes four thousand euros tied to drugs. Desperate, Luce reaches out to her friends and parents, but they believe being with Loris is nothing but trouble. That is when an old friend, Vittoria, steps in with a simple solution. She introduces Luce to Blue, an erotic online platform where posing nude and performing certain acts can earn quick money.
This is definitely not the direction Luce wanted to go in, but Vittoria walks her through her first session with a bit of girl-on-girl action. After Luce’s first solo session, the man paying for the session turns out to be a close friend of her father and demands that she do kinkier stuff or he will expose her new line of employment to her parents and friends. Making matters worse, Loris learns of Blue and urges her to stop at once, but Vittoria has bigger and better plans for the pair.
“She introduces Luce to Blue, an erotic online platform where posing nude and performing certain acts can earn quick money.”
Blue is part erotic thriller and part a warning against human sex trafficking. Since the production is from Italy, it leans more toward the erotic thriller end of things. Story-wise, it plays things by the book. It follows a young woman in love who’ll do anything to keep her new love out of trouble. Everyone sees Loris as a bad seed primarily because he’s poor, which only speaks to Luce’s resolve to save him.
As a high-end cam-girl and performer in a one-time striptease show, Luce is quickly sucked into the world of hardcore entertainment. She experiences the thrill of the show and the dark, seedy underbelly of those willing to pay for certain acts to be performed online.
Let’s be real. You’re not here for a moral lesson. This is all about Luce’s journey into online voyeurism, and the film gets hot and heavy at a soft-core level. While this is the main reason viewers are here, we do have a fantastic, dramatic performance by Alexia Cozzi, who hits all the right notes on Luce’s rise to the bottom. Add a script that is more than just a soft-core fantasy, and Blue kicks into an intriguing thriller by the end. Bottom line: Blue is a solid thriller.
By the end, Eleonora Puglia’s Blue pushes Luce into a corner where survival means facing the damage done by love, fear, and desperation. What remains is a thriller built on how fast one bad decision can topple an entire life.
"…Blue kicks into an intriguing thriller by the end."
