Trois couleurs: Bleu [Three Colours: Blue] (1993)
(On DVD, September 2019) I’ve been fascinated by the Trois couleurs trilogy (on titling alone) for a quarter of a decade, so now was the time to see what the fuss was about. The trilogy apparently sends familiar premises spinning in new directions and I can certainly see it at play in Trois couleurs: Bleu, a film in which a familiar dramatic situation—a woman devastated by grief after having her husband and son die in a car crash that she survived—is given an unusual turn. Here our grieving protagonist decides to retreat from the world, leaving no address even to friends and family. Juliette Binoche anchors the film in a complex performance, portraying a character freed by her grief, yet not entirely able to give in to self-destruction. Trois couleurs: Bleu may be heavy at times, but there’s an off-beat quality to its story that makes it compelling. It’s not the kind of film that I’d readily re-watch again, but there’s a careful balance of cinematography (focusing on, yes, the colour blue) and music that adds a lot to the purely narrative drive of the film. This is, clearly, a film with clear artistic intentions and writer-director Krzysztof Kieślowski has the skills to execute the result to his satisfaction.