Blue
by Krzysztof Kieslowski
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Benoît Régent, Florence Pernel, Julie Delpy, Juliette Binoche, Zbigniew ZamachowskiDirector: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
Cinematographer: Lechoslaw Trzesowski
Writer: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Producer: Marin Karmitz
Writer: Agnieszka Holland
Writer: Edward Zebrowski
Writer: Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Writer: Slawomir Idziak
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 98 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-03-04
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Miramax
Movie Reviews of Blue
Movie Review: Grief and loss explored with mystery, grace, and compassion
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a beautiful film with superb photography and acting, especially the brilliant performance of Juliette Binoche. The film begins with tragedy as the husband and 5 year old daughter of a young French woman are killed in a car accident. Julie (played by Binoche) is knocked unconscious and does not remember the accident or the deaths of her family members. She is badly cut and bruised from the accident but she is overcome with grief, so much so that she attempts suicide, which she aborts. The brilliance of the film is the depiction of a cold persona by Julie to contain the grief and to maintain her sanity in the face of such loss. Upon release from the hospital she does about the careful work of destroying all the manuscripts remaining of her husband's orchestral compositions as well as most of the remaining aspects and objects of her family life prior to the accident. Her grief is so great and her hold on sanity so slim that she feels she must destroy every reminder of her life before. We are given an odd clue at this point in the film when a television talk-show personality invades her privacy and asks if the rumor is true that Julie composed her husband's symphonies? We now begin to get a sense of why the tragic passages of her husband's last symphony keep sounding in her head. Are they coming to her because they are her own unfinished works or are they coming to her because of her memories of her husband or are they coming to her because their tragic sound is trying to get her to release her grief? She puts the family cook and gardener on retainer and puts the family country mansion up for sale. She moves into a top floor apartment in a Paris neighborhood where she thinks no one can find her or recognize her and in which she can disappear from the world. She does keep a ceiling lamp of blue beads from her daughter's bedroom and this item becomes somewhat of a passage as her former life catches up with her gradually, at a pace she is able to absorb. Julie perceives that her husband's friend and colleague, Olivier, has a secret desire for her and she asks him to come to her. They make love, but Julie has no intention of opening herself to pain again and she leaves Olivier. She appears to have needed a night of sexual comfort but with no intention of beginning to live again in relationship with others. This is not true of Olivier who has secretly retained some of her husband's last manuscripts and photographs from his working desk.
Julie can not disappear from life for life has a funny way of creeping back. Primarily it is through compassion for others that healing begins for Julie. This reminded me of the excellent film, All About My Mother, where it is compassion for the pain of others that eventually is the path by which our own grief begins to melt. A series of odd events begins to pull Julie back into the world, including her gentle supportive acceptance of a young prostitute; conversations with her mentally frail elderly mother; daily swims in a blue pool, and a confrontation with a mother mouse and baby mice. By telling her mother about the deaths of her child and husband, she is finally able to speak the horror she has experienced. By swimming in the pool, she can finally cry. By putting a cat into her apartment, she is able to separate her loss of her daughter from the need to get the rats out of the pantry. This film is exceptional in the careful and patient manner in which it depicts the healing process after great personal loss. In folk tales, it is often a weak character or small animal that leads the lost hero out of the wilderness. They young prostitute who lives in her apartment building plays this role. While responding to a call from help from the young prostitute neighbor, Julie sees a television show with photographs of her husband with his mistress, Sandrine. She searchers for Sandrine and finds her 9 months pregnant. Her bond with Sandrine is full of compassion at their mutual loss and she begins to think about what her husband would have wanted for his new child.
The film is beautiful at many levels. The settings and photography are superb and the acting is of the highest quality. Binoche gives a performance that is intelligent, natural, sensitive, and moving. The use of imagery, such as the blue pool in a dark gymnasium, evoked images of baptism and healing each time that Julie emerges. Water is often a symbol of the unconscious, and it is healing at an unconscious level that is also required when a great loss has occurred. The film is outstanding and highly recommended. It is one of the best depictions of the healing process around grief captured on film. The beauty of the production makes this topic soar.
Summary of Blue
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