The title Forty Shades of Blue is evocative and poetic. On a literal level, it refers to the mood of the film—blue, melancholic, and shaded. But it also speaks to the nuance of the characters' emotions.
How Laura’s status as an immigrant in the American South mirrors her emotional displacement in her own home. Ira Sachs’ Evolution: Compare this to his later hits like Love Is Strange for the blog post or a summary of the ending to help with your writing?
The story follows Laura (played by Dina Korzun), a Russian woman living in Memphis with her much older partner, Alan James (Rip Torn), a legendary but philandering music producer. Their relationship is stable but emotionally hollow. When Alan’s estranged adult son, Michael (Darren Burrows), arrives to stay with them, a subtle and forbidden connection develops between him and Laura, forcing her to confront her own loneliness and the reality of her life with Alan.
Emotion wrung out of drunk's victims movie review - Roger Ebert