An awesome film to look at but not to watch

Rating: 8/10 (18 September 2003)

Trois Couleurs: Bleu is one of the most amazingly crafted films I have ever had the privilege to watch. Being the first in Kieslowski's series of films about contemporary French culture, it was naturally the first and (up to this point) the only one that I've seen.
It is visually perfect: Kieslowski's direction, his attention to detail and his sheer style ring truer here than in Amator, the only other of his films that I've witnessed. He also manages to extract a marvellous performance out of Juliette Binoche who portrays a female composer dealing with the tragic and unexpected death of her husband and her child, basically without grieving. She's essentially a fairly frustrating character, comparable to the character of Stephane from another great French flick, Un Coeur en Hiver. She effectively isolates herself from painful feeling by similarly isolating herself from the people around her and from her music. The onscreen result is brilliantly sad in the way it is portrayed, however it is unfortunately quite thin, and at times a little slow.
The overall effect, then, is not exactly a film to sit down and watch repeatedly. Once is enough, and you can feel happy that you've watched a master at work. But like I've said about other films, Trois Couleurs: Bleu is far more of an exercise in artistic filmmaking than just a film. You can scrutinise it, analyse it and appreciate it for all its brilliance but not watch it 'just for fun'. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, because it sure isn't. It's wonderful that there are films out there like this that care far more about artistic merit than taking the audience 'for a ride', it will always help to expand the range of cinema.
And while I may often sit down to enjoy a high-explosive Van-Damme popcorn flick, it's far more of a delight to see a tale like this being brought to life with such exceptional quality.
****1/2 / *****