TROIS COULEURS: BLEU Movie Review

Three Colors: Blue Blue

In 1993, Poland's Krzysztof Kieslowski completed three films which he dubbed the Trois Couleurs trilogy, with one film named after each of the colors in the French flag. Bleu (Blue), the first of the films to be released and the most downbeat of the three, is the story of a woman (Juliette Binoche) whose composer husband and child are killed in a traffic accident. In the instant of the crash, she not only lost her family, but also the melodies that her husband would never write. Binoche pulls off something quite extraordinary by keeping us with her during her long, silent stretches of grieving—we always are aware that she's working through the trauma, and that even if she'll never make sense of it (who could?) she's determined to not allow her mourning to become her master. Of the flag's three colors, it is blue that stands for liberty. The superb scores for all three of the films in this cycle—Bleu, Blanc (White), and Rouge (Red)—are by Zbigniew Preisner. Venice Film Festival Awards, Best Picture, Best Actress.

NEXT STOP … Trois Couleurs: Rouge, Trois Couleurs: Blanc, Maborosi

1993 (R) 98m/C FR Juliette Binoche, Benoit Regent, Florence Pernel, Charlotte Very, Helene Vincent, Phillipe Volter, Claude Duneton, Hugues Quester, Florence Vignon, Isabelle Sadoyan, Yann Tregouet, Jacek Ostaszewski; Cameos: Emmanuelle Riva; D: Krzysztof Kieslowski; W: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Slawomir Idziak, Agnieszka Holland, Edward Zebrowski; C: Slawomir Idziak; M: Zbigniew Preisner. Cesar Awards ‘94: Best Actress (Binoche), Best Film Editing, Best Sound; Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards ‘93: Best Score; Venice Film Festival ‘93: Best Actress (Binoche), Best Film; Nominations: Golden Globe Awards ‘94: Best Actress—Drama (Binoche), Best Foreign Film, Best Score. VHS, LV, Letterbox TOU