Kieslowski stretches out the mystery a little longer. Julie goes to visit her mother and stands at the window of her home, observing her watching a man walk a tightrope. She stares for a few seconds and decides to walk off. The symphony begins playing in her head as she slowly walks off. It’s a surprisingly lengthy walk off, we see her stalking off the grounds with no idea what’s in her mind or what she’s up to.
She arrives at Olivier’s house. He opens the door and looks delighted to see her, but then reads the look on her face and knows that something is wrong. He asks if she went to see her (Sandrine.) Julie comes in, pulls out a cigarette and lights up. Then she gives a very puzzling line, saying that Olivier once insisted that she take Patrice’s papers but he refused. This is not shown in the film, even though we do see Olivier with the papers in a folder at one point. Perhaps the scene was deleted for pacing reasons, but it does create an odd continuity moment.
Julie asks, if she’d take the papers, would the pictures have been inside. Olivier says yes. And if she had destroyed the papers, she never would have known. Olivier confirms this. But then she responds “maybe it’s better this way.” She asks to see what Olivier has written.
I have a soft spot for moments in film where creative collaboration is celebrated, so I love what follows. They go through lines in the score and we hear it played as intended by Olivier, instrument by instrument. Julie has incredible ideas at every turn that alters the shape of it — take out the trumpet here, less percussion there. I love the way the film goes out of focus here, forcing us to focus on the sounds. At a key moment, Julie knows she wants to replace the piano, but hesitates what to add. Olivier, who heard the flute with her from the cafe, knows the correct answer and she agrees.
But Olivier doesn’t have the finale. Julie remembers that she had a fragment of the score with her, the piece of paper she lifted from the piano at home early in the film. Julie says Patrice considered it a memento to Van den Budenmayer. The film’s composer Zbigniew Preisner created this fiction Dutch composer for the ninth episode of Kieslowski’s “Dekalog,” and the character’s music (really Preisner’s) reappears in “The Double Life of Veronique” and later in “Three Colors: Red.” Preisner later fashioned a Van den Budenmayer piece for Kieslowski’s funeral.
Julie then gets up to leave. She asks Olivier if he’s still in touch with their lawyer and has he heard if their house has sold. Olivier says he would have heard if it did. She then asks him to pass onto the lawyer that she no longer wishes to sell it. As she goes, she asks if Olivier can show her the symphony again once he’s integrated everything.
The one thing most noticeable as Julie leaves is that, for one of the few moments in the film, she’s smiling. The creativity has given her a lift. And also, perhaps, opened her mind to other resolutions.
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