Denouement

We arrive at the two scenes that bring all of the strands of “Three Colors: Blue” together. But I don’t want to write about them, not the same way I usually do. Recounting the dialogue, trying to describe the camera shots and the actors’ reaction, it’s all just too small.

It’s taken me multiple viewings to understand that the movie is really about Julie coming to terms with her relationship with her late husband Patrice. She mourns deeply for her daughter immediately and painfully. It is that loss that drives her into seclusion and separation.

But there was another type of loss with Patrice, one that she couldn’t fully articulate. She knew there was a distance, even though she wasn’t aware of his affair. And it’s only in the ripening collaboration with Olivier that she finally came to understand exactly what was missing in her relationship with Patrice. She compensated for his weaknesses, made his music warmer and more relatable. But he could not return the favor of making the music equally hers. He kept the acclaim selfishly for himself.

She kept hearing ways to complete the work that was always partially hers. But she fought against stepping forward to finish it. In death, Patrice was getting all the acclaim. She couldn’t bear to continue on with this fiction. It is only when Olivier enters the scene that she allows herself to collaborate again.

In opening up, she starts to feel again, and she makes one of the most startling sacrifices I’ve seen in film. It’s a very Christian type of sacrifice, bordering on matyrdom. She invites Sandrine over to the house where she and Patrice lived … and she gives it all to her, because she wants Patrice’s newborn son to have his name and his family home.

Sandrine recalls how Patrice told her Julie was a very good and generous person, someone who chose to be that way and would always be so. Patrice even had the nerve to say that she was someone Sandrine could rely on, because everyone could rely on Julie. That little speech affects me emotionally one way—it feels right to hear Julie given such praise, given that it was so easy throughout the film to misunderstand her. But it also feels so presumptuous of Sandrine to say this.

Somehow Julie hears this and isn’t offended. I think she has a lifetime experience being sacrificial. In a sense, she’s just returned to her old pattern. She then returns to working on the score and when she completes it, she calls Olivier and tells him he can pick it up, now or whenever he’d like. But Olivier does something also surprising, the one thing that redeems him completely in my eyes.

Olivier says he’s been thinking about it and doesn’t want to take Julie’s edits. Either he can turn in his version of the symphony, imperfect as it is, or Julie can step forward and take credit for the work she’s done. What I like about Olivier’s response is that it puts part of the onus on Julie. Yes, she was resentful of Patrice for taking all of the credit, but she reinforced this dynamic by never asking for the credit. Olivier is saying no—he doesn’t want Julie’s excessive generosity.

And so, we move towards the closing scene of “Three Colors: Blue,” a montage that pulls all of the elements of the film together, by seeing Julie transformed by love. It’s only through her willingness to be an equally giving and receiving partner that she is able to finally let go of the past and form new attachments that are worth surrendering small elements of her liberty to maintain.