Three Colors: Blue

Released 1993
Cast: Juliette Binoche, Benoit Regent, Florence Pernel, Charlotte Very
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

One moment, Julie (Juliette Binoche) had everything; the next, her husband and daughter have been killed in a car accident and her own face is a patchwork of lacerations. The physical recovery proves less difficult than the emotional one, and Julie ends up selling her house, burning her late composer-husband's compositions, putting her mother in a home, and running off to live in relative anonymity, with "no memories, no love, no children." Life, however, is intent on forcing Julie to confront certain elements of her past that she might rather not face.

Juliette Binoche, in what amounts to a one-woman show, turns in her best performance since The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and arguably her most accomplished ever. She manages to bring an element of humanity and sympathy to a potentially unsympathetic character. There is little in Julie, as written, for the audience to latch onto, but Ms. Binoche provides the emotional link to the story.

Summary by James Berardinelli

I just wrote about this a few weeks ago, but grief is a personal thing. Everyone responds to sudden loss differently, and there's no blueprint to follow. Julie loses her husband and only child in a car crash that she survives, but she doesn't turn into a quivering jellyfish of emotion.  She does exactly the opposite. After deciding to not kill herself, she rids herself of everything that reminded her of her past life and runs from her old life to live anonymously. Her entire storyline pretty much mirrored mine. After my loss, I just had to get away from everything that reminded me of my life. It's a defense mechanism for some people to allow them to be able to heal enough to later deal with the loss (and the future without that person) when they're able. This movie captures this very well, but it's difficult to watch Julie during this process, because she completely internalizes everything. There are moments when her emotions barely bubble to the surface, like when she can't bring herself to kill the baby mice, but there aren't many of them. The film concentrates on the loss of her husband, but the greatest tragedy is losing a child. I have no clue how I'd be able to stop myself from swallowing a bottle of pills, and I think that's why the story had to concentrate on the husband. Visually, this film is a dream. It's gorgeous with the endless blue shots and the various images, like the blue foil, the swimming pool, and the sugar cube. It's a beautiful film, but I do wish they had let us get inside Julie a little more. -- Bill Alward, April 20, 2003