Blue

Blue is a 1993 French film written, produced, and directed by the acclaimed Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski. Blue is the first in the Three Colors trilogy, themed on the French Revolutionary ideals; it is followed by White and Red. According to Kieslowski, the subject of the film is liberty, specifically emotional liberty, rather than its social or political meaning. Set in Paris, it depicts Julie, a woman whose husband and child are killed in a car accident. Suddenly set free from her familial bonds, Julie attempts to cut herself off from everything and live in isolation from her former ties, but finds that she cannot free herself from human connections.

Julie, wife of the famous composer Patrice de Courcy, must cope with the death of her husband and daughter in an automobile accident she herself survives. While recovering in the hospital, Julie attempts suicide by overdose, but cannot swallow the pills. After being released from the hospital, Julie closes up the house she lived in with her family and takes an apartment in Paris without telling anyone, or keeping any clothing or objects from her old life, except for a chandelier of blue beads that presumably belonged to her daughter. For the remainder of the film, Julie disassociates herself from all past memories and distances herself from former friendships, as can be derived from a conversation she has with her mother who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and believes Julie is her own sister Marie-France. She also destroys the score for her late husband's last commissioned, though unfinished, work: a piece celebrating European unity, following the end of the cold war. Snatches of the music haunt her throughout the film.

She reluctantly be friends an exotic dancer who is having an affair with one of the neighbors and helps her when she needs moral support. Despite her desire to live anonymously and alone, life in Paris forces Julie to confront elements of her past that she would rather not face, including Olivier, a friend of the couple, also a composer and former assistant of Patrice's at the conservatory, who is in love with her, and the fact that she is suspected to be the true author of her late husband's music. Olivier appears in a TV interview announcing that he shall try to complete Patrice's commission, and Julie also discovers that her late husband was having an affair. While both trying to stop Olivier from completing the score and finding out that her husband's mistress was, she becomes more engaged despite her own efforts not to be. She tracks down Sandrine, Patrice's mistress, and finds out that she is carrying his child; Julie arranges for her to have her husband's house and recognition of his paternity for the child. This provokes her to begin a relationship with Olivier, and to resurrect her late husband's last composition, which has been changing according to her notes on Olivier's work. Olivier decides not to incorporate the changes suggested by Julie, stating that this piece is now his music and has ceased to be Patrice's. He says that she must either accept his composition with all its roughness or she must allow people to know the truth about her composition. She agrees on the grounds that the truth about her husband's music would not be revealed as her own work.

talk to her

Talk to Her

Talk to Her is a Spanish movie produced in 2002. Written and directed by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. The film's themes include the difficulty of communication between the sexes, loneliness and intimacy, and the persistence of love beyond loss.

Benigno ("benign" or "harmless" in Spanish) and Marco cross paths when they attend the same concert dance, only to eventually meet again at a private clinic where Benigno works. There, he is the personal nurse and caregiver for Alicia, a beautiful dance student who lies in a coma, and with whom Benigno has become obsessed. Marco, a journalist and travel writer, is at the clinic to visit his girlfriend Lydia, a famous matador who is also comatose after being gored by a bull. As the men stand vigil over these women, the story unfolds in flashbacks, giving details of the two relationships. Marco leaves Lydia when her previous lover informs him that they had reunited a month before Lydia's accident. He travels to Jordan to write a tourist guide; while there he reads in a newspaper that Lydia has died in her coma.

Meanwhile, Alicia is discovered to be pregnant. Benigno, who believes his relationship with the comatose Alicia is a mutual love affair, is accused of raping her and is sent to prison in Segovia. After Marco returns to Spain and begins trying to help him, he ingests a large quantity of pills to try to put him into a coma, thus reuniting himself with Alicia; but he dies of an overdose. Ironically, Alicia wakes up during or sometime after childbirth. The baby is stillborn, and Alicia begins rehabilitation to recover her walking ability. Marco, who has rented Benigno's apartment, sees her from the window and is thunderstruck; he was unaware that she has come out of the coma. The film ends with Marco, sitting two rows in front of Alicia at a dance concert, turning around and smiling at her for a moment, and then turning back around (the screen lists Marco y Alicia as the next act, implying that the two will become a couple.)

I think that this movie considers one of the best movies in the international Spanish cinema, because the basic foundation of the film is reflecting on ideas inspired by people that cannot reciprocate conversation, parts of Talk can drag on with shades of repetition. And since the setting is often two people talking in a room, there are times when it plays more like theater than film. It's appreciated that Almodovar respects his characters' changing motivations, but some sections end well after the emotional points have been made, which can get particularly exhausting when watching two hours worth of drama,But the atmosphere remains as visually stimulating to watch as the people inhabiting them that draw our attention. These men are fascinating because they are imperfect, emotive, and smart without being wimpy, which is what American directors usually make their male protagonists into in times of crisis. It's also an amusing idea to have a plot that rests on characters that are unresponsive, a wonderful challenge that the veteran filmmaker rises to better than expected. Adding to an already eclectic body of work that supports a positive human spirit through an ensemble journey, Talk to Her is just plain great cinema that we could use more of.