Rating: 
Summary: Three Colors - Blue, White, Red
Review: These three movies are superbly put together. Unfortunately the US is denied the DVD versions which are available in Europe (region 2, PAL) now. One wonders what the distributors are thinking. They underestimate the sophistication of the American public and their insistence that they are not available on DVD is a downright lie. These films represent an excellent view of European life with their careful observations of social behaviors and the layered intrigue.Bleu (Blue) the first of the films is beautifully acted by Juliette Binoche. The story is twisting and complex - watch for the old woman who is trying to put a bottle into a recycle bin. She re-occurs during the other films. In fact to really enjoy these films you should watch them in the sequence, Bleu, Blanc Rouge. The characters re-appear but from the point of view of another story. Blanc, is wickedly funny and has an edge that is not in the others but has a surprisingly hard taste to it. Rouge returns to the mood of Bleu and is more moody with a story around a man who spies on his fellow countrymen. The final scenes where the characters of all the movies appear is intriguing. These films have deceptively simple exteriors but layer the complex feelings about ourselves underneath and can be watched repeatedly.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful film...
Review: I must agree with the reviewer from Chicago - achingly beautiful is the best possible description. This is the finest example of why Juliette Binoche is a goddess among actresses. The film is melancholy, to be sure, but contemplative, as well. A brilliant take on the theme of Liberty, and easily the best of this trilogy. This film is best digested on a quiet, lonely, dark night with a bottle of red wine...
Rating: 
Summary: Haunting and Artistic
Review: Juliette Binoche plays the part of a woman faced with the awful tragedy of loosing both her husband and daughter in a violent car accident. She becomes self-destructive and tries to kill herself. When that fails, she is faced with the reality of having to live. With the love of one man in her life, she still denies herself happiness for the moment. She seeks oblivion in music. The luminious blue nature of the scenes and way in which the movie was filmed make this very artistic. A slow moving film that will make you feel tense. Yet it is hauntingly beautiful and filmed only the way a French film can be. I love the accents and am very attraced to French foreign films for that very reason. I am not sure if Juliette Binoche looks like Julia Roberts or if Julia Roberts looks like Juliette Binoche. I like their acting almost equally well, yet Juliette Binoche captures your heart and comes across as a much deeper actor with so much more to give onscreen. Her character was not cheapened by circumstance and she seems to have an inner strength which does not let her give up on life. Recommended for the patient and those who enjoy the artistic nature of French films.
Rating:
Summary: Achingly beautiful
Review: This is an amazing film. It is visually stunning, and the story, while heartbreaking, is also liberating. Binoche's character plumbs the depths of loss and the soul of despair, and rediscovers who she is in the process. The music will haunt you, too. I can't praise it enough--I've seen it dozens of times and never tire of it.
Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: I love BLEU, as I love all of them! I think that my favorite of the three is ROUGE, because I was able to understand more of it than the rest. Blue is a wonderful movie, with a sad mood, set by the accident in the beginning. I love Benoche's performance, I think that she portrayed the hidden grief of her character with suberb talent. WOW
Rating:
Summary: FROSTED
Review: This was the first role I ever saw Juliette Binoche in although she had previously starred in many diverse roles and is a big star in France. It was breathtaking. The film focuses on trying to live with the grief she feels after her husband and daughter die in a car accident. She gets rid of their house and moves to a new apartment trying to move on with her life. She befriends a woman in the apartment building (who happens to be a woman that the rest of the residents want to evict). The film moves somewhat slowly but never too slowly. The course of the film is perfect to convey Binoche's grief and angst and her eventual coming to terms with the realities of her life before and after her family's death. She discovers that her husband was having an affair with another woman... a woman with whom he was in love. A woman whom Binoche comes to meet and discover is pregnant with a child. Binoche finally gives the home she and the husband had shared to this woman so the child can grow up in its father's home. Binoche also experiences a reawakening of love... and finishes the last work her composer husband left behind. A beautiful film with some of the most superior acting. (Also check out the gorgeous soundtracks to all three films in this Kieslowski trilogy).
Rating:
Summary: Bleu - a philosophical movie which requires YOU to think
Review: 'Bleu' is a movie which seems impossible to understand in one single viewing: it has many, many layers. The key to understanding is the meaning of its color, Blue which stands for Liberty. It explores every aspect of this subject in an unusual, philosohical, subtle way. Is 'liberty' equal to 'indifference' or 'freedom', 'absolute freedom of choice'; 'freedom to act'? Is it the same as 'solitude' or does it mean 'absolute nothingness'? Notice the cross-references to the other 'colors' of the trilogy. Children dressed in white bathingsuits with red floaters jumping into the blue swimming-pool; Binoche 'accidentally' entering the court-room where the main Polish character of 'White' is pleading his innocence; Red in the prostitute neighborhood; etc. Bleu is the most important of the trilogy, for it threads all three together, mainly by the text of its music (Bible, Corinths 1), adding almost like a fourth color, Love: "Though I speak with the tongues of angels, If I have not love... My words would resound with but a tinkling cymbal. [etc.]" Kieslowski is like a Rembrandt in his use of color and light, and during his lifetime, poorly understood. His works and thoughts are brilliant but not easy to understand at first - one must chew on it before understanding shimmers. This trilogy requires YOU to think. The Maestro didn't do it for you! When asked, 'What does this or that movie of yours actually mean?', Kieslowski grinned, and cunningly, brilliantly answered, 'I don't know, that's up to the audience!'
Rating:
Summary: Rediscovering Human Attachment
Review: This movie takes hold of you more the next day than when you watch it. Binoche's character, Julie, decides to detach herself from the human world of emotion, after the suffering caused by the death of her husband and her daughter in a car accident. She gives up her home, makes a rather callous decision to sleep with an admirer, then finds herself a "piaule" apparently in some popular arrondisement of Paris. However, several incidences conspire to draw her back into life. A decision to have a cat kill a mother mouse and her babies rekindles a maternal feeling. She learns from a telivision interview she happens to see that one of her husband's musical compositions is to be completed without her authorization. Pride and possesiveness seem to push her here. She learns from the same interview that her dead husband had had a mistress. Jealousy moves her back into the human sphere here. This movie recalls Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness of Being" in that it aims to show that a life without emotinal attachments is hollow indeed. Kieslowski's brings into play his fascination with coincidence and how it links people and changes fate. This is a leitmoif throughout all of his films. Cannot give it 5 stars because the film moved slower than necessary. Nonetheless, it is a very good film. Thomas Seay
Rating:
Summary: You see more each time you look at it
Review: I must confess that I originally rented this film so I could give my feeble comprehension of spoken French a workout. I was immediately hooked by this powerful work or art and have since purchased a copy. Juliette Binoche is brilliant as a woman who loses her husband and child in a senseless accident. Beyond the normal horror of such loss, is the problem of the haunting, unfinished music that her husband was expected to complete for a celebration of the unity of Europe. Binoche's character, it gradually becomes clear, was its real composer, but she wants nothing to do with it, even going so far as to attempt to destroy the unfinished sheet music. The issue of the freedom of the individual runs through this film. The prostitute neighbor becomes a friend because Binoche refuses to sign a petition to have her thrown out of her apartment for plying her trade. The woman at the transcription service could have simply carried out her duties, but instead preserves a copy of the music because she feels it is too beautiful to be lost. The widow is free to hate the woman she discovers pregnant with her late husband's child, but chooses kindness instead. This is a film about individuals making decisions for their own reasons and not those others might expect. Even though the last scene has Binoche in tears, those tears are an affirmation of freedom and the dignity and worth of the individual.
Rating:
Summary: A pure masterpeice
Review: This movie is maybe how would be an godly-inspired theological movie rewritting Bible's hope message for modern times. The story starts showing a wealthy french family life where Juliette Binoche portrays a happy mother. Then the family has a major car crash where she is the only survivor. Here life is destroyed and she goes to hell while she slowly undergoes physiotherapy. From there, she fights slowly against herself and goes up the ladders of true liberty. The outcome is her acceptance of love and her true meaning in life. The movie is a difficult psychological treck against egoism and self-destruction and it finishes on a true vision of hope and humanity. Everyone should see it when depressed.
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