the good woman
by
Douglas Messerli
Krzysztof
Piesiewicz, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Agnieszka Holland, Edward Żebrowski (writers)
Krzysztof Kieślowski (director) Trois
couleurs : Bleu (Three Colors: Blue)
/ 1993
From the composer’s desk, Olivier,
however, retrieves a score for the symphony and a stash of photos hidden within
it.
Little is said, and we are not even told
what Julie did in her life; but it is intimated in a news report, early on,
that she may also have been a collaborator with her husband, and has actually
composed many of his famous works. But here the movie almost goes mute, as
Julie attempts to adjust to a new life. What is clear in Binoche’s beautifully
expressive acting, is that Julie has so loved
her husband and daughter that she has now attempted to cut herself completely
off from anything that might remind her of them, that her grief is so
unassailable that she has gone into a kind of hibernating state, cutting
herself off from everything else in life.
When Olivier finally tracks her down, she
immediately sends him packing. Julie’s own mother (quietly played by the great
Emmanuelle Riva) does not even recognize her as her daughter when she visits
her, confusing Julie with her own sister.
But gradually we perceive that Julie is
not the cold-hearted woman in grief that she first appears to be. Although she
has not yet been able to cry, she is naturally kind-hearted, refusing to sign a
petition by the other tenants of her building to oust her neighbor, a woman who
is having an affair with her next door neighbor and who performs nude in a male
club, Lucille (Charlotte Véry); and in that act she gains the woman’s deep
friendship, and later comes to her rescue when Lucille spots her father in the
all-male crowd at her club.
Julie
also meets with the decent young man who, having observing the crash, has
pulled her from the car and called the ambulance. He has found a small cross
nearby, which he now is
happy to return to her; after hearing her
husband’s last words, however—the punch-line of a joke they had just shared—she
gently rewards the cross to the boy for his help and kindness.
Through these simple acts—the visit to her
mother, her conversation with Olivier, the attention she gives to a local
street-performer who plays a recorder, her friendship with Lucille, and her
gentleness with the boy—we come to see that Julie is a naturally kind person
who, in her need of others, will not be able to live long in the retreat from
the world she has attempted to create for herself.
After over-hearing a news interview with
Olivier, who displays Patrice’s score and corrections along the photographs
hidden within, and proclaims that he is working to complete it, Julie confronts
him, demanding that he not attempt to finish the composition and asking him who
is the lovely woman in the photographs. He explains that she was Patrice’s
mistress.
Returning to Olivier, she promises to
work with him in finishing the symphony, knowing of her husband’s plans for a
final chorus from First Corinthians,
singing of Saint Paul’s praise for divine love.
The film ends with a revived Julie,
finally crying, having realized that her husband’s simple humanity and her own
place in his life as a “good” person, as Patrice, himself, has described Julie
to his mistress. Patrice was not a saint, and Julie can now go on in her new
liberty, sharing her own love with others.
Working very much in the tradition of
Bresson, Kieślowski forgives his characters while simultaneously revealing
their sins and errors. The world, he demonstrates, is not made up of heroes,
but ordinary men and women trying to live out their lives with joy and
fulfillment. If Julie has not, as it has been previously suggested, co-written
her husband’s compositions, it has now become the reality, and in that act, she
has found a new meaning to life.
Los Angeles, November
29, 2016
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