Collapse

One of the tropes of gangster films is the moment where the crime boss starts to see everything he’s built start to slip away. You could argue that every episode of “The Sopranos” is about examining that state. The fake world of power and safety begins to crumble. The ego cannot hold back the entropy.

A unique feature of “Three Colors: Blue” is that it features that kind of ego collapse, but when it happens, it’s beneficial to everyone, including the protagonist. I don’t know of another film structured that way. As much as I enjoyed watching Julie create her edifice of safety and comfort, it’s even more joyous to see it begin to crumble, even if that brings on anxiety.

We cut from Julie, talking to her mother and anxious about the mice, to Olivier getting a courier package at his door. He’s received a copy of the score, the one the copyist claims not to have duplicated before Julie arrived and destroyed it. He begins looking at the orchestra score, makes himself a drink and goes to the piano to start playing some of the new fragments.

I must point out that Olivier has the stereotypical male intellectual apartment in French cinema. Every male protagonist in a French film, whether it’s made by Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Assayas, all seem to live in the same book-crammed apartment with a prominent piano and strategically placed liquor bottles. They all have far too many book piles to ever be tidy, and they give off a strong “of course a child has never been here, and yes, it’s been awhile since a woman’s been here too” vibe. As much as I’d hope to live in a place like Julie’s, I know myself well enough to know I’m far more likely to dwell like Olivier.

While he’s playing the symphony, the scene cuts back to Julie’s pantry, where we get to see the mother mouse carrying around the baby mice and feeding them. We next see Julie go to her downstairs neighbors, the one with the cheating husband. He comes to the door and seems to be hitting on her pretty aggressively, but Julie ignores all that and asks if she could borrow his cat for a couple days. He warns that the cat hasn’t been neutered and can be aggressive, which is actually just what Julie is looking for. While the neighbor is definitely creepy, it should be noted that the earlier favor she did for him probably earned her the borrowed cat.

Julie then introduces the cat to her pantry, here’s the cat meow harshly, closes her eyes, then closes the door to the pantry. We next see her in what until then had been her place of peace, swimming solo in the pool. Except this time, when she finishes a lap, she’s startled to find Lucille, who says she saw her running “like crazy” from the bus, so she followed her. Lucille asks if Julie has been crying.

This brings on another of Julie’s symphony blackouts.It seems odd to ask someone who’s been swimming if they’ve been crying, doesn’t the chlorine make everyone look that way? And Julie uses it as an excuse, but then, after asking Lucille if she ever wears underwear and she replies “jamais,” she leans into her as if to admit her anxiety and weakness. She tells Lucille that she brought at cat home and left it in her pantry because there was a mouse, and baby mice.

Lucille asks if she’s afraid to go back. Julie nods. Lucille then asks Julie to give her the keys, she’ll go clean up. Once again, Julie’s past small acts of kindness lead to kindness in return. But as Lucille walks away, suddenly a huge class of water wing wearing girls enter the pool area. Julie looks frightened again to be in the presence of so many children—girls no less.

The girls’ white bathing caps look like little circles running towards and jumping into the pool. More destiny Julie cannot escape.