Three Colours: Blue.html



Three Colours: Blue
©MK2 1993
Directed by	Krzysztof Kieślowski
Produced by	Marin Karmitz
Written by	Krzysztof Piesiewicz Krzysztof Kieślowski Agnieszka Holland Edward Zebrowski
Starring	Juliette Binoche Benoît Régent Emmanuelle Riva Florence Pernel Guillaume De Tonquédec
Music by	Zbigniew Preisner
Cinematography	Sławomir Idziak
Editing by	Jacques Witta
Distributed by	Miramax (USA)
Release date(s)	January 10, 1993
Running time	100 min.
Language	French

Three Colours: Blue (French: Trois Couleurs: Bleu, Polish: Trzy kolory. Niebieski) is a 1993 French film written, produced and directed by the acclaimed Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski. Blue is the first in the Three Colors trilogy, themed on the French Revolutionary ideals; it is followed by White and Red.

According to Kieślowski, the subject of the film is liberty, specifically emotional liberty, rather than its social or political meaning.¹ Set in Paris, it depicts Julie, a woman whose husband and child are killed in a car accident. Suddenly set free from her familial bonds, Julie attempts to cut herself off from everything and live in isolation from her former ties, but finds that she cannot free herself from human connections.

Synopsis

Julie, wife of the famous composer Patrice de Courcy, must cope with the death of her husband and daughter in an automobile accident she herself survives. While recovering in the hospital, Julie attempts suicide by overdose, but cannot bear to go through with it and spits out the pills before swallowing them. After being released from the hospital, Julie closes up the house she lived in with her family and takes an apartment in Paris without telling anyone, or keeping any clothing or objects from her old life, except for a chandelier of blue beads that presumably belonged to her daughter. For the remainder of the film, Julie disassociates herself from all past memories and distances herself from former friendships, as can be derived from a conversation she has with her mother who suffers Alzheimer's decease and believes Julie is her own sister Marie-France. She also destroys the score for her late husband's last commissioned, though unfinished, work: a piece celebrating "the unity of Europe", commissioned by the Council of Europe. Snatches of the music haunt her throughout the film. She reluctantly befriends an exotic dancer who is having an affair with one of the neighbours and helps her when she needs moral support. Despite her desire to live anonymously and alone, life in Paris forces Julie to confront elements of her past that she would rather not face, including Olivier, a friend of the couple, also a composer and former assistant of Patrice's at the conservatory, who is in love with her, and the fact that she is suspected to be the true author of her late husband's music. Olivier appears in a TV interview announcing that he shall try to complete Patrice's commission, Julie also discovers that her late husband was having an affair. While both trying to stop Olivier from completing the score and finding out who her husband's mistress was, she becomes more engaged despite her own efforts not to be so. She tracks down Sandrine, Patrice's mistress, and finds out that she is carrying his child; Julie arranges for her to have her husband's house and recognition of his paternity on the child. This provokes her to begin a relationship with Olivier, and to resurrect her late husband's last composition, which has been changing according to her notes on Olivier's work. Olivier decides not to incorporate the changes suggested by Julie, stating that this piece is now his music and has ceased to be Patrice's, she agrees also on the ground that then the truth about her husband's music would be revealed. In the final sequence, the Unity of Europe piece is played (which features chorus and a solo soprano singing Saint Paul's 1 Corinthians 13 epistole in Greek), and we see images of all the people Julie has affected by her actions.

Production

Blue was an international co-production between the French companies CED Productions, Eurimages, France 3 Cinéma and MK2 Productions, the Swiss company CAB Productions and the Polish company Studio Filmowe TOR.

Like the other films in the trilogy, Blue makes frequent visual allusions to its title: numerous scenes are shot with blue filters or blue lighting, and many objects are blue. When Julie thinks about the musical score that she has tried to destroy, blue light overwhelms the screen. The film also includes several references to the colors of the tricolor that inspired Kieślowski's trilogy: several scenes are dominated by red light, and in one scene, children dressed in white bathing suits with red floaters jump into the blue swimming pool. Another scene features a link with the next film in the trilogy: Julie is seen accidentally entering a courtroom where Karol, the Polish main character of White, is being divorced by Dominique, his estranged French wife.

Responses

Blue was admired by many critics. Marjorie Baumgarten of the Austin Chronicle said: "Blue is a movie that engages the mind, challenges the senses, implores a resolution, and tells, with aesthetic grace and formal elegance, a good story and a political allegory."² Prolific online film critic Dan Schneider wrote: "It is a mark of the intelligence of this film that it does not opt out for the cheap American way of resolving conflicts. Both females act in mature ways. There is no catfighting, much less some sort of ‘erotic’ attraction that develops between the two women. Such non-lowest common denominator reality has no place in the cinema that emerges from Hollywood. And if not violence or sex as a response, a Hollywood film would go for cheap sentiment. There would be a trite ‘moment of revelation’ that is really not so deep. Instead, the two women just deal with their situations as most people would...Blue is a flat-out masterpiece. It is as mysterious as a work by Antonioni, as symbolic as a work by Bergman, as humane as a work by Fellini, and as precise as a work by Kubrick."³

Principal cast

• Juliette Binoche: Julie de Courcy (née Vignon)
• Benoît Régent: Olivier Benôit
• Charlotte Very: Lucille
• Emmanuelle Riva: Madame Vignon, Julie's mother
• Florence Pernel: Sandrine
• Guillaume De Tonquédec: Serge

Soundtrack

Main article: Three Colors: Blue (Soundtrack)

Awards

• Venice Film Festival, 1993: Best Film and Juliette Binoche, Best Actress, Best Cinematography: Sławomir Idziak
• Cesar Award, 1993: Best Actress: Juliette Binoche, Best Sound, Best Film Editing
• Goya Awards (Spain's Academy Awards): Best European Film

Notes

1. ^ Three Colors: Blue, Bonus Features: Commentary by Anne Insdorf, A Look at "Blue".
2. ^ Baumgarten, Marjorie. "Calendar: Film Listings - Blue", The Austin Chronicle, March 18, 1994. Accessed May 21, 2007.
3. ^ Alternative Film Guide accessed 8/07/08

External links

• Three Colors: Blue at the Internet Movie Database
• Three Colors: Blue at Rotten Tomatoes
• In depth review of Blue
• Movie MovieMeter - Trois Couleurs: Bleu (1993)

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