French Travel Film Diary # 5 Blue

Laurie Troutman
April 14, 2007
Professor Larry Tung
Paris Travel & Learn
Diary # 5


Three Colors:
Blue


The film Blue is a deep story that centers around a woman named Julie. As a result of her husband and child’s death, it showed how she continued to live on with her struggles of the accident. It was made in 1993, and was directed, produced, and written by Krzysztof Kireslowski. Blue was the first of a trilogy, which carried on to White and Red, based on the French Revolutionary Ideals. The film was nominated in 1994 for three Golden Globes. First for best foreign language film, second for best original score, and lastly for best performance by an actress in a drama for Juliutte Binoche, however none of which won.
The film started off with a car crashing into a tree. We see a man, a woman, and a child driving happily, smiling, racking jokes, and then the next minute a tragedy. The woman, Julie then awoke in the hospital clearly shaken and unaware of what happened. Abruptly she realizes that she just lost her daughter and husband in the car crash. Julie didn’t understand why she wasn’t taken with them. She didn’t want to be alive, so Julie broke into the medicine cabinet, and tried to commit suicide by taking the whole bottle of pills. Shortly after a nurse found her and made her spit out the pills, as Julie began to break down crying.
It was hard for Julie to get over her family’s death, because it was broadcasted on television. Her husband was a famous composer, and they were waiting for The Conort Unification of Europe song. As a result of his popularity, his funeral combined with his daughters was on television. This is were Julie begins to brake away from her past life. She isolations herself from friends and all memories, by selling all her old possessions and moving into the country side.
Julies emotions was hard to pin point at times. Most of the time she would sit motionless with a blank reaction on her face, not crying or showing grief. When Julie would sit and think of her past memories, a blue light and symphony orchestra would play. Like the name of the title, Blue is placed in the movie, shot with blue lights or filters. Citied on Wikepedia.com, “ The Blue hour comes from a French expression (heure bleue) which refers to the often magical hour experienced between the hours of daylight to darkness.” (Wikepedia.com) I feel the director used the blue light at moments to illustrate when Julie herself thought of her great life, but then those memories that went to darkness. I liked how the light and music was used together in the film, and thought it brought a deeper meaning to it.
Although Julie wanted to hide from her past life, it certainly did anything but. One thing she did was destroy the notes of the unfinished unification of Europe song, by throwing it into a garbage truck. Julie wanted nothing to do with or hear her husband’s music, although it followed her everywhere she went.
Some pieces of Julies life starting falling into her lap, even though she wasn’t ready for them. As a result of being lonely Julie begins to seek a companion, someone to talk to and that person was Oliver. Oliver, played by Benoit Regent, was her husbands side kick at work and they began an affair. I don’t think she understood how to handle the affair, but they grew to love one another.
As she continues her romance with Oliver, Julie comes to find out that her husband was having an affair, while they were married. How does someone deal with the emotion of hating, and loving someone at the same time? Here Julie is grieving for the death of her husband and at the same time, hating him for the affair. As if that wasn’t enough, she finds a picture of them together and finds out that the other woman is having her dead husband’s child.
At the end of the film, Julie visits her mother and says to her she wants no friends, no memories, no love. For Julie it’s hard for her to realize that her whole life was a lie, but in the same respect it wasn’t meaningless. That was her past, her memories, her family. Will Julie continue her late husbands music, or will it be gone like the rest of her life?
So, therefore does anyone really know their loved ones or what’s going to happen from one minute to the next. The answer is no, and for Julie she had to find out the hard way. I did enjoy the film Blue, it had different elements from other films. Such as the blue lighting, music, and unique set up of the structure of the film. The movie dragged me in visually, and kept me wanting more. I defiantly would like to watch the other films White, and Red to find out what Julie decided.