BLUE (video, 1993, French with English subtitles, 100 minutes) Trois Couleurs: Bleu is the magnificent first film in Kieslowski's new trilogy named for the colours of the tricolour. The blue of liberty is the underlying shade of this film.
But this film has little to do with the political freedom inspired by the French revolutionaries. Instead, Kieslowski focuses intimately on a devastated woman struggling for personal freedom.
As always, Kieslowski elicits extraordinary performances. Juliette Binoche is compelling as a young wife, Julie, who loses her husband and daughter in a car crash. The film opens with the little girl's child's-eye glimpses of a family outing. An ominous shot of leaking brake fluid heralds the stunning disaster. Henceforth, we see through Julie's eyes. As she slowly returns to consciousness in the hospital, the image of the doctor is refracted on her iris as he tells her of the deaths of her husband and child.
Her husband, Patrice, was a famous composer. At the time of his death, he was working on a piece of music to be performed simultaneously by 12 orchestras in all the European Community capitals. This image of international harmony is undermined by the suggestion that Julie wrote his music. She neither confirms nor denies it. It is the first sign of deception.
Julie is numbed by grief and cannot even cry. She enters a blue, anaesthetised world of mental isolation where time is fragmented. A strand of music magnificently underscores the film.
Alienation is gently dissolved as Julie begins again to form the fragile bonds of relationships. Almost accidentally, she befriends a prostitute and another composer who is in love with her. She discovers her husband had been unfaithful to her in more ways than plagiarising her music. He had a mistress who is expecting his child. Once the lie of the past is unravelled and accepted, Julie is free to live again. The music which Julie finishes is finally played in full as the camera links all the characters in a final montage of understanding.