Edits

The last scene ends with Julie in a state of deep meditation. She’s faintly hearing the symphony in her head, a string section, but isn’t fighting it. She’s letting it guide her calmly into slumber. It’s impossible for me to convey the beauty of the scene, or any scene in the movie, it’s one of the most beautifully photographed films I’ve ever seen and just revisiting a few seconds of it is joyous in its own way.

I backed up to that point because that last scene so beautifully sets up the film’s next cut. We see Julie drop a flower pot, startled by the sound of her doorbell. The state of her being startled fits so well with her in meditative slumber in the previous shot. Julie appears to spend much of this segment of the film in a daze. She’s dealing with her grief by focusing intensely on her personal sensations moment to moment.

It appears she’s doing something elaborate with the plant, having it grow across the wall of her apartment, and by dropping it she severs a branch, which should make her annoyed. But instead Julie is apologetic to the woman at the door for any noise she might be making in the move in.

The woman at the door brushes off the apology, but after noting that Julie had to sleep in the stairwell, and hearing that her husband had given her a blanket to assist, she presents Julie with a petition to eject the woman living on the same floor as her from the building, because she is a sex worker. It’s curious to me that instead of being furious with her husband not only for sneaking around with a sex worker, but having the audacity to seek out someone in the same building, she targets the woman. Regardless, Julie refuses to sign, saying she doesn’t want to get involved, even as her neighbor implores her and says everyone else in the building has signed.

Here we see another interesting duality in Julie. She refuses on the basis of apathy—not wanting to get involved in a matter of controversy she sees as none of her business—but we also know that isn’t her real reason. And just to underscore that, the next scene features Julie sitting in the park watching an elderly woman, who can barely move and has the posture of a question mark, slowly work her way across the park just to insert a bottle into a recycling container. Also of note: we hear the pan flute playing in the background in this scene, a reminder of the street musician who also caught Julie’s attention.

As the elderly woman passes by Julie, she reached a point in a chain link fence where there is a prominent circle, indicating another matter of destiny. Perhaps it’s a sign to Julie of what her life might be like if she continues to live it alone. When the woman reached the recycling bin, the bottle is inserted into yet another circle. The metaphor here may be about mortality. Julie meditates through this moment, eyes closed, focusing on the music and the enjoying the sun on her face.

In another wonderful cut, the movie now jumps to Julie in her doctor’s office. The juxtaposition is of the old, frail woman with Julie receiving a physical and getting back a report that she’s in perfect health, with a strong state of mind, indicates that mortality was on her mind. But as the physical comes to an end, she’s interrupted by a strange outreach.

The phone rings and someone named Antoine has called the doctor. The doctor hands the phone to Julie and says “it’s for you.” This feels like something out of dream logic, who receives calls from outsiders when at the doctor’s office? Isn’t there the equivalent of HIPAA in France, is it really ok to track people down via their physician? Anyway, the doctor explains that Antoine has been looking for Julie, and it’s something to do with a cross necklace.

Julie touches her neck and immediately understands what the call is about.