Hey everyone, welcome back to the blog! I wanted to start off my blog this semester with a film that I watched for a course this semester, so I decided to go with my favorite so far: Three Colors: Blue, Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski. Three Colors: Blue follows Julie (played by Juliett Binoche) as she navigates through the grief of losing both her young daughter and husband in a car crash in which she was the sole survivor. A large chunk of this film focuses on the aftermath of her husband’s death because he was a famous composer with an unfinished symphony meant to play at the unification of Europe, which places him as an extremely famous composer. The music played at the funeral haunts Julie whenever he is brought up in passing or in conversation, but there aren’t a lot of moments in the movie that connect back to the daughter’s passing. Three Colors: Blue seemingly forgets about the daughter’s impact on Julie, but a deeper analysis shows that she is just as represented as the husband in the narrative, but through a more subtle approach. Julie’s daughter holds firm the undertone of motherhood through the blue candy wrapper, the mobile hung in Julie’s new apartment, and Lucille herself. This blog post contains spoilers for the film Three Colors: Blue.
Julie keeps physical items to remember her daughter by but focuses much of her attention on fighting the memory of her late husband. In the very beginning of the film, the daughter can be seen waving a candy wrapper out the window of a moving car until it eventually flies away. The wrapper itself is blue, and with it blowing away when in the car, foreshadows her death soon after when the car crashes into a tree. This wrapper then reappears when Julie visits her house, though this time, the candy is uneaten and still in the wrapper. Julie consumes the candy inside violently after finding it, which feels deliberate because she also shows violence towards the mobile when she first spots it by ripping it from the ceiling (though not completely.)
Julie consuming the candy ravenously has two different interpretations for me. The first is that her grief is all consuming and is now physically manifesting by cannibalizing any good memories that Julie has of her. It can be assumed that the car ride had a positive emotion connected to it before the crash because of the joke that supposedly was finished when the boy who found the car crash heard the punchline from the dying husband. It’s also clear that the grief is ravenous because she also proceeds to invite Oliver over only to sleep with him, given that she leaves in the morning without really saying anything to him. Julie eating the candy and being left with the wrapper could also represent how Julie is left with the memory of her daughter but is missing the physical being of her daughter, left with only a husk of what the daughter is and meant to her. The second interpretation is that there was animosity or fear towards the daughter in a way that isn’t exactly clear to the audience, but is revealed more subtly later in the film through Lucille.
When Julie tries to get rid of the past, the only thing she keeps is the crystal blue mobile that hung in the blue room. This is a little strange considering that Julies goal at this point in the movie is to dissociate entirely from her life and attempt to move on from the tragedy of losing her family, but her actions show that she doesn’t want to lose the connection she had with her daughter. While there is no explicit mention in the movie’s dialogue that the blue mobile/chandelier is the daughter’s, we can infer that it belonged to her because of something that Lucille says later in the movie. With Julie consistently staring at the reflections of the torn mobile crystals, it’s clear that she wants to keep her connection with her daughter. This is also reinforced in the scene when Julie talks to her lawyer (or bank associate, it isn’t clear.) The lawyer very briefly leaves the room and Julie takes the moment to look down at the torn mobile crystals. The man then reenters the room and asks Julie “What will you have left?” While this appears to be about her financial situation, it is too close to Julie looking at the crystals in the scene sequence to not be connected. Julie has the blue and white mobile as well as the candy wrapper to keep her daughter’s memory.
Though Julie’s daughter is never named in the film, Lucille acts as a physical reminder of the daughter and lives vicariously through her. Lucille enters Julie’s apartment and strikes up conversation with her because Julie inadvertently saves her by choosing to not sign a petition to kick her out of the building because she is a sex worker. Lucille sees the blue crystal mobile in Julie’s new apartment and remarks that she had one when she was a kid but forgot about it when she grew up. In a way, this shows that Lucille lost her freedom, especially given that others (her neighbors, “coworkers”) only view her for the work she does in the sex club. Sex worker as a job choice traps her through its societal pressures. It is also interesting that when Julie opens the door to see who it is, Lucille is standing there with white daisies, which happens to be one of the colors of the hanging mobile. When the camera pans to the mobile with light shining through it, the white gems are missing but the daisies were handed to Julie from Lucille. Lucille’s comment about forgetting the mobile also implies some fears that Julie could have had about her daughter. The blue color of the mobile itself may also represent innocence given that it was ripped from the daughter in death but immortalized through Julie keeping the mobile.
Julie takes Lucille under her wing through saving her from getting kicked out. While this could seem purely up to chance, Lucille likely reminds Julie of her daughter since Lucille herself is a bit childish in her behavior. It wouldn’t be that far of a stretch to link Lucille’s very adult career choice to Julie’s potential anxiety around raising a daughter (this is further supported by Julie later in the movie giving the house to her husband’s mistress who is having a boy instead of a girl.) There are also shot compositions that support Julie metaphorically taking Lucille under her wing. When Lucille is in Julie’s apartment, there is a bisected shot with Julie on one side of the wall with Lucille on the other, showing us that there is some sort of divide that they are not willing to cross quite yet. Though as the scene continues, Julie passes through the opening in the wall to Lucille’s side, showing how she is ready to act as a mother figure once again and metaphorically passing into Lucille’s world.
Another scene that outlines Lucille as a stand in for Julie’s daughter is when Lucille visits her at the pool. Lucille follows Julie to the pool as if she has nothing better to do, much like a child might follow around their parents due to not having much freedom of their own. The scene plays out as Lucille is informed about the mice and how Julie used the neighbor’s cat to kill them. As Lucille turns to leave with Julie’s house key to clean up the mess, a very interesting detail is added: an entire class of children begin running and jumping into the pool behind Julie with the camera shot remaining tight on Julie’s face. While it is difficult to tell whether these children are the same age as Julie’s daughter, it wouldn’t be that big of a stretch to place them at roughly the same age range or even a little bit older. The children running past Julie can be interpreted as the natural continuation of the childhood that her daughter never had, but because she just ran into Lucille within the scene as this was happening, the film draws a connection between them. This is also the first time in the movie that the pool is seen during the daytime with other people present. Normally, the pool can only be seen in a deep shade of blue to both represent Julie’s depressed state of mind and Julie’s coping method of submerging herself in her grief. While the scene materializes the pool into reality, Lucille appearing there shows that she has entered Julie’s headspace, which further supports Julie’s nearly adoptive approach to being friends with Lucille.
The cinematography of Three Colors: Blue supports connections between Lucille and the loss of Julie’s daughter through many scenes, and there are surely more that are contextualized by watching the other Three Colors films. While the research and interpretation done here feels complete around its own subject, I am curious to see if there is research surrounding Lucille’s sexual nature and how that factors into her character as well as how it afflicts this interpretation of her. This character interpretation also doesn’t factor in Julie’s mother as a character, which may also be important to knowing the different dynamics between the characters. Given that so much of this movie is intentional with its approach with color and character positioning relative to each other, there should be ways to dissect this incredible film even further. For my next blog, I hope to bring some literary analysis to break up the monotony of the film watching I’ve been doing recently for the blog. While I love watching movies, variety is good for the soul. See you next time!
– Harper Saglier, Blog and Layout Editor.
Harper Saglier – Blog Editor, Prose Editor & Layout Editor : Harper is a junior at Lewis University majoring in English with a concentration in Writing. They are currently employed at the Howard and Lois Adelmann Regional History Collection. When they aren’t reading academic material, they enjoy watching movies and reading books from their endless growing backlog of recommendations. They hope to use the analysis and writing skills gained from Lewis to further drive their interest in literature beyond graduation. Some of their favorite authors include Neil Gaiman and Oscar Wilde.