Three Colours: Blue

Three Colours: Blue (French: Trois couleurs: Bleu, Polish: Trzy kolory: Niebieski) is a 1993 psychological drama film co-written and directed by Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski. It is the first instalment in the Three Colours trilogy, themed on the French Revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, followed by White and Red (both 1994). According to Kieślowski, the subject of the film is liberty, specifically emotional liberty, rather than its social or political meaning.

Set in Paris, the film follows a woman named Julie (Juliette Binoche) whose husband and daughter are killed in a car accident. Suddenly freed from her familial bonds, she tries to isolate herself and live in seclusion from her former ties. However, she discovers that she cannot escape human connections.

Upon its release, Blue received widespread critical acclaim and won several awards, including the Golden Lion and the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. It remains one of Kieślowski's most celebrated works. The male lead, Benoît Régent, died of an aneurysm at the age of 41 in October 1994, just one year after the film was released.

Julie, the wife of famous French composer Patrice de Courcy, loses her husband and five-year-old daughter in an automobile accident but survives herself. While recovering in the hospital, Julie attempts suicide by taking an overdose of pills but is unable to swallow them. After being released from the hospital, Julie, who is thought to have helped write much of her husband's famous pieces, destroys what remains of his work. She contacts Olivier, a collaborator of her husband's who has always admired her, and sleeps with him before bidding him farewell. She empties the family home and puts it up for sale, moving into an apartment in Paris near Rue Mouffetard without informing anyone. Her only memento is a mobile of blue beads that is hinted to have belonged to her daughter.

Julie dissociates herself from her past life and distances herself from former friendships. She is no longer recognized by her mother, who has dementia. She reclaims and destroys the unfinished score for her late husband's last commissioned work, a piece celebrating European unity following the end of the Cold War. Excerpts of its music, however, continuously haunt her.

Despite her desire to live anonymously and alone, Julie is soon confronted by her past. A boy who witnessed the accident gives her a cross necklace found at the scene and asks her about her husband's last words, which turned out to be the punchline of an indelicate joke the husband was telling the family. Julie allows the boy to keep the necklace. She also reluctantly befriends Lucille, an exotic dancer who is having an affair with one of her neighbors and is despised by most residents of the apartment building. The two women provide emotional support for each other. While comforting Lucille at the Pigalle club where she works, Julie sees Olivier being interviewed on television, revealing that he kept a copy of the European piece and plans to finish it himself. Julie then sees a picture of Patrice with another woman.

Julie confronts Olivier about the European piece and asks him about the woman seen with Patrice. She tracks down Sandrine, a lawyer and Patrice's mistress, and discovers that she is pregnant with his child. Julie arranges for Sandrine to have the family home, not yet sold, and eventual recognition of his paternity for the child. Julie then returns to working on the piece with Olivier and finishes the final part. She calls Olivier, who refuses to take the piece as his own unless Julie is credited as well, to which Julie agrees. Julie then calls Olivier again and asks him if he still loves her; he says yes, and Julie proceeds to meet him.

Part of the completed Unity of Europe piece is played, which features a chorus and a solo soprano singing in Greek; the lyrics praise the divine love in Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. Images are seen of all the people Julie's actions have affected. Julie cries before she begins to smile gradually.