Indie Film Review “Bleu”

Krzysztof Kie?lowski began his career in the 1970s directing urban set documentaries, intimate sketches dealing with politics and social issues. By the end of his career, Kie?lowski found himself shifting away from such explicitly political material. The early 90s would see the Polish director dedicated to capturing the human moment, the discarded, the ordinary and finding some kind of redemption in it. Kie?lowski’s “Bleu” (the first installment in his celebrated Colors Trilogy) is perhaps his greatest effort in this later stage of his career.

“Bleu” is a somber portrait of one woman’s desire for a darker kind of freedom –– a life without memory, purpose or human contact. A car wreck claims Julie de Courcy’s husband and daughter, and after a failed suicide attempt, Julie, played by Juliette Binoche, commits herself to a life of isolation. She puts her family’s country estate up for sale, burns nearly all her belongings and quietly moves into a modest apartment in Paris.

Her husband’s celebrity status (he was one of France’s most cherished composers) makes the attempt at solitude a difficult one. Reporters, colleagues and friends demand to be shown the composer’s unfinished work. Having no desire to revisit the past, and with public pressure mounting, Julie gathers up her husband’s manuscripts and destroys them.

Cut off from society, she spends her days in solitude. “Now I have only one thing left to do: nothing. I don’t want any belongings, any memories. No friends, no love. Those are all traps,” she tells an uninterested relative. But Julie’s will proves not strong enough. The music and those who love her slowly find their way to her –– life splits its way across the cold expanse and reality pours in.

Binoche carries the film with a quiet restraint. Hers is one of those rare performances in which we are honestly offered a character who is truly reborn. The pain feels real and so does her surfacing. Kie?lowski slowly lets the film unravel, something that gives space to Binoche’s performance.

Remnants of the surreal grandeur that dominated his previous film, “The Double Life of Vernoque,” exist in “Bleu,” but Kie?lowski opts for a more internal journey. Kie?lowski is confident enough here to provide us with the smaller, intimate moments and let them expand before our eyes. It may be the most reserved of his later films, but it’s still a quiet triumph of a film, something that burns with a rare intensity.

Posted by Joe Cornelison on Sep 1 2011. Filed under Leisure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.