A film I’ve come across that uses colour in a similar way to ‘Her’ is Abdellatif Kechiche’s ‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’, like Jonze’s ‘Her’, ‘Blue is the Warmest Colour’ uses the colour blue in someway in every frame, it cleverly tells of the emotional arc of two lead characters by using the amount of blue sparingly, with little saturation, when their relationship is falling apart, and by doing the complete opposite, using it wholly encompassing and fully saturated when they are most in love.
Unlike Her, where red was used surrounding one character, blue’s use is associative, it is the connection between the two leads and represents their relationship, in many ways you could say that blue actually represents love in this film, as opposed to the more expectant red. Blue through being a representation of love tells us a lot about the kind of love we are seeing, it is rebellious and itself non-conformative, just like using blue to represent it.
Which leads to a rather interesting thought, can we really use any colour to represent anything so long as it is consistent, or does this perhaps only work because blue is breaking the rules just as the relationship is?
Blue is the Warmest color (2013) Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. Belgium.
Her (2013) Directed by Spike Jonze. USA.
Colour Theory in Moving Image 