Suspended in our minds when we start Three Colors : Blue is the image of a fluorescent blue candy wrapper which is clutched in a small child’s hand. On a grey and overcast morning the patch of color seems alive and innocent as we see it crinkle and flutter against the air, as it is held out the car window. It is a moment that marks the “before” for Julie (Juliette Binoche), a moment before her life draws a line at what was, and what now is her reality.
Moments later the family drive is violently concluded as the car swerves off the quiet country road and crashes into a tree. The occupants of the car all dead except Julie, who survived while her husband and young daughter did not. But being a lone survivor does not come without its own unique unspoken penalty as the person deals with the guilt of living when others one cared deeply for did not.
That is the case when we first properly encounter Julie who is recovering from the crash alone in a hospital room. Battered and bruised from the accident she somberly watches the televised funeral of her husband and child due to the fact that he was a prominent french composer. The moment is eerie as we, like Julie watch the staticky screen show the image of the average sized casket and alongside it the much smaller one. With a gentle hand she lightly traces her fingers along the image of the child size casket, a small silent moment only a mother can have when she cannot properly say goodbye to a beloved child.
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In a moment of desperation fueled by the mounting grief, Julie stealthily sneaks out to obtain pills to assist in hopefully taking her life. With her mouth full of the pills she cannot swallow them and they come tumbling out but the moment brings no relief, only a more accented sense of weariness and acceptance of a new status quo she must accept.
This is not a moment that brings a hopeful light to Julie’s perception or a new lease on life. No, from this moment Julie moves through life in a sort of limbo; not wanting to live inside the past yet not really motivated to make much of the future. More so, she seems content to just live life day by day, it may not be the most joyful existence but for now this is her life.
Before cutting off all the attachments to her past life, all its possessions, as well as her family’s sprawling country home, Julie decides to spend the night with Oliver (Benoit Regent), a past collaborator of her husband who seems to hold a certain attraction to her. Alone in the now empty and cavernous home the two sleep together, which seems mostly an act of mindlessly forgetting the present for Julie than any true act of mutual attraction.
Despite an urge to leave everything behind, one item does get brought along as a representation of what life was like. And that is a delicate blue crystal mobile which we are led to believe belonged to her daughter. Now alone in a small apartment in the middle of Paris, we stand witness as Julie begins this new life which seems aimless yet freeing of all ties that bound her.
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As Julie begins to minimize her life and shave off the excess material items of her past, we are led to believe that her famous composer husband did not work alone and it is heavily implied that Julie was a large contributor to the musical pieces or possibly even the sole creator while he took all the credit and glory. We start to see a mild contempt or resentment Julie has due to this as she takes his incomplete Concerto for Europe, and destroys it by tossing it in a garbage truck that takes the papers and rips them apart as they soon become one with all trash.
It is not so easy to live her life without attachments, as Julie soon reluctantly begins to become connected to others, while also getting sucked back into the life she dearly wishes to leave behind. A young man who was witness to the car crash seeks her out to return a cross necklace and recount that when he went to the scene he heard her husband’s final words. Those final words being the punch line of a very off color joke, which does manage to very temporarily bring a slight smile to Julie.
Meanwhile, at her new apartment she notices an affair being carried out between a married man and an exotic dancer. Though not in the mindset to make friends, the dancer Lucille (Charlotte Very) soon becomes an unofficial confidante. This new relationship with Lucille indirectly brings to light a secret of her husband’s life when she is comforting Lucille, and catches sight of a news story on her husband, and pictures of him with a young woman. Also in the same story Oliver is interviewed and says that he plans on completing her husband’s unfinished final piece which is something Julie does not really want.
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Soon, Julie starts out on this odyssey to wrestle with the lingering threads that bind her to the past and refuse to let her go. She seeks out and finds her husband’s mistress Sandrine (Florence Purnell), who just so happens to be carrying his child. As any woman would be we can tell that this turn of events is not something pleasant, yet to seemingly cut the strings she allows Sandrine to have the old family home, and also the recognition that her husband did in fact father this child.
In doing this Julie soon goes to Oliver and looks to help finish the final piece together in collaboration. As we come close to the end, we hear part of the now completed concerto play which is less rigid and bombastic as the original. This one is softer and the edges feel more rounded and pleasant to the ear. While the music plays we cut to Julie’s face gently pressed against a glass surface, which almost evokes a sense as if she is underwater, or at the very least experiencing a brief moment of escape as we witness her and Oliver making love.
The scene soon dissolves as we witness all the people Julie has encountered through the film in moments of contemplation, reflection or realization. This ends with one final shot of Julie who is alone and cast in shadows with shades of blue. Tears run down her face in what is one of the very few times we have seen her cry in the whole entire film, as she allows herself a moment to grieve.
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Three Colors: Blue is the first installment in Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy, with each film representing French Revolutionary ideals with this installment focused in on liberty. This liberty though is not that of society or politics, but rather emotional, as we go along and see Julie soon obtain a liberty that is solely hers and hers alone, and the freedom that it gives her.
Three Colors: Blue is also a serious look at grief, and how it is an emotional process unique to each and every individual that has to contend with it. Julie at first wants to escape and shut herself off from having to fully face the pain she has after the accident, and leaving behind her life instead.
As mentioned before, we start the movie off with the image of a blue metallic candy wrapper, and this is imagery we see again later. While raking through the contents of her handbag Julie comes across an uneaten piece of candy in the same blue wrapping and we can only assume that this was the same candy her daughter greatly enjoyed. Alone and allowing the emotions to sit with her, she rips the paper and consumes the hard candy as if the act will take away some of the pain.
Julie bites down hard and we hear the candy break and crunch in her mouth. We also see her body shake as if this otherwise simple act is barely containing the well of emotions trapped beneath her surface. But in small acts like this we see Julie slowly obtain the freedom from this pain.
