Juliette Binoche Movie:

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		Our Price: $36.99
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
The first installment of the late Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy on Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, the three colors of the French flag. Blue is the most somber of the three, a movie dominated by feelings of grief. As the film begins, a car accident claims the life of a well-known composer. His wife, played by Juliette Binoche (Oscar winner for The English Patient), does not so much put the pieces of her life back together as start an entirely new existence. She moves to Paris, where she dissolves into a wordless life virtually without other people. Kieslowski attaches an almost subconscious significance to the color blue, but primarily he focuses on Binoche's luminous face, and the way her subtle shifts in emotion flicker and disappear. The picture may be more enigmatic than the follow-ups White and Red, but Binoche's quiet, heartbreaking presence becomes spellbinding; her performance won the best actress prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1993. --Robert Horton

Three Colors: Blue [Region 2] Reviews:
Sad, Mysterious, Mournful
2009-07-15 - This movie was panned and trivialized when it came out and Kieslowski was trivialized as being a arty filmmaker without art. I even debated whether I should go see it. When I did, I loved it! I was glad I went and didn't pay so much attention to movie critics. Later as White and Red received better and better reviews, Kieslowski was more respected and when he died, critics loved him. Juliette Binoche is terrific in the movie Blue which is named after the color of the French flag and stands for liberty. Julie is "liberated" suddenly from family ties by a tragic accident which kills her family. She tries to cut all ties but her attachment to people continues. While her husband was a great composer hired to write music for the coming of the European Union, it comes to light that she might have been writing for him with his composing partner whom she was having an affair. Is it true or merely rumor? Will it be helpful for France to stay alone in the world or join the European Union? Europe and Julie on the edge of a new slightly scary relationship.

Grabbing at the start but loosing momentum as the film progresses
2009-05-04 - I bought this movie as my girlfriend whom I start to love so much has experienced a very similar tragedy. As we both started watching and only me knowing the plot, it was quite emotional. As the movie progressed it was hard to understand the emotions and the actual meaning of often very deep hidden messages. We found ourselves a bit bored during the 2nd half of the movie as we couln't understand the subtle signs and clues given in the movie. Athough the use of cinematographical effects/angles and sounds is no doubt excellent, I only got the full understanding of this and the plot after watching it a 2nd time with the narration voice. This made the movie much more meaningfull.
I believe the movie could have been better if not so much of the original screenplay was omited and more time was spend on dialogue of the characters, this would make the movie 2 or 2.5 hours long.
Right now, I've fully enjoyed the movie after watching the 2 seperate audio tracks and will watch a 3rd time with the original.
Still believe it was an great movie! Just doesn't get a 5 star rating cause I think sense and emotion must be captured in a single viewing for it to be an excellent movie.

The film represents the apotheosis of European art cinema just at the moment when its very existence seemed most uncertain...
2009-02-11 - "Three Colors Blue" is the first part of Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy... "Blue" is set in France, "White" in Poland and "Red" in Switzerland, but all production was based in France... Not only are the colors of the trilogy those of the French national flag; the original intention was meditation on the ideals of the French Revolution: freedom, equality and fraternity... This suggests a political dimension to the work... But though like most Polish filmmakers Kieslowski had his difficulties with the Polish Communist system, its collapse by the early 1990s meant that he was not only free to work where he pleased, but liberated from the necessity for his films to engage directly in the political process...

In "Three Colors Blue" Juliette Binoche plays a woman whose husband and daughter are killed in a car crash... Overcome by melancholy, she progressively withdraws from life, depriving herself of possessions and refusing relationships, a state of mind conveyed in part by the director's subtle use of color blue... But eventually she is able to accept the attentions of a lover and even to offer friendship to another woman who is pregnant with her husband's child... Finally, she completes the piece of music which her husband has been commissioned to write...

The result is a work that has less in common with the Polish 'Cinema of moral concern' of the late 1970s than with the tradition of the mainstream European art cinema, in its concerns with alienation and the loss of feeling, countered by the transcendent power of love...

3 stars out of 4
2009-02-02 - The Bottom Line:

Somber and meditative, Blue is probably the least accessible of Kieslowski's trilogy but Binoche is very good and by the conclusion patient viewers will probably feel their 100 minute commitment was not in vain; if you like quiet dramas, Blue is for you.

a sharp choice of story for the theme
2009-01-27 - I've seen this movie many times since 1995, but last night I watched it for the first time as an artist and single mother, and I realize I hadn't appreciated before the costs of her liberty, the value of the liberty, or the cruelty inherent in the art that carried her along after her daughter's death, the genuine death of her marriage, even (to twist the knife) the loss of her mother's memory. He went right to the joint, Kieslowski did. I couldn't watch it all, this time.

I don't think the blue mobile was her daughter's, by the way. I accept that she was the composer, and that for her there was a synaesthesia with the music and the blue lights. I expect the blue room was her composing room, and that the mobile was a thing from her art, which is why in the end she took it along. She had to; she needed it. The music needed it.