Liberation, your name is Juliette Binoche

Rating: 10/10 (1 April 2012)

"Trois Couleurs: Bleu" often ranks only second in Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy dealing with liberty, equality and friendship. True, the picture doesn't have the emotions on the forefront like Rouge does, but in its coldness, estrangement and portrayal of unspeakable desperation, its painful observation of someone who just cannot go on anymore lies its strength. Juliette Binoche plays a woman who epitomizes loss: her husband is dead, so is her daughter, all in an instant. Gone is what she was used to call her life, her passion for everything she ever cared for, the money has lost its importance, even her demented mother doesn't know anymore who she is, and it doesn't end there. Staggering on the brink of the abyss there is no will anymore to leap over the cliff, but even with the decision to retreat from everything the lives of others are affected...
"Bleu" is the perfect combination of a visually oriented director, great script and editing (e.g. with inventive fade to blacks) - and an actress who perfectly understands how to play a grieving, inaccessible widow and at the same time the fragile being who could shatter any minute. Oh, and we shouldn't forget the importance of music in this movie, as this is what it's all about: To bring back music in someone's life in order to liberate the self from, well, let's say: being blue. It works so well that it hurts - but that's the purpose.