Latest Updates - Julie Delpy

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

Man in a suitcase.

Probably better titled: Three Colours: Black...

...As this has a more deadpan, straight-faced, blackly comic, acidic tone, which is not as sparse and economical (or poetic) as the predecessor: Three Colours: Blue, and is a quite quirky, and protracted tale of revenge, of sorts.

The delightfully named: Karol Karol, a Polish man, and burgeoning star of the international hairdressing world, is divorced in the opening scene by his beautiful French wife, Dominique, because he is unable to consummate their marriage, and so takes him for everything he's got, leaving him destitute on the streets of Paris. He can't even get home to Poland, having lost his passport.

Thankfully, while busking in the tube station one day, a fellow Pole takes pity on him and promises to help him get home, by smuggling him on a flight in his large travelling case... so long as he, in turn, helps him kill himself.

From there, Karol plays all the angles and builds himself up in almost Vito Corleone style to position of some power and wealth, all in order to exact a very insidious and subtle form of revenge on Dominique... But does he still love her, after all?

It's kind of a Gilliam-esque, Monty Python / Fish Called Wanda farce, but played straight, and less wacky, but certainly absurd... but for all that, it's a pretty good film.

Three Colours Blue is still light-years better than this, but the contrast in tone and style works well, as a kind of darkly comic- relief to that more earnest tale.

>The reason I got all three Three colours movies before watching any of them, was I'd heard they needed to be watched in order, because elements from each may appear in the others - in the case of the first two, Blue and White, I don't think you need to especially, nor even the last: Red, but certainly the ending of Red only makes sense if you've seen these two first<

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

Blue is the coolest colour.

I've been meaning to see this trilogy for some time, and finally came across Three Colours Red last year, but got frustrated waiting for the other two to turn up, so got them from Amazoon.

This one is a lot shorter than I thought it would be, at only an hour and a half, but sparse, minimal, even glacial look and feel allows the runtime to easily accommodate the slower pace without feeling rushed.

This is a perfect study in grief and trauma, and the general melancholy than comes of it, as Juliette Binoche's: Julie, having lost her famous composer husband and daughter in a car crash in the opening scene, is numb, and somewhat bewildered, as she then tires to break from anything to do with her old life, but in seeking to "get lost" and hide away, discovers other things about her late husband that accord a little too well with things about her herself, in a way that may lace her melancholy and grief with guilt, and cause her to reflect and re-evaluate the whole of her life.

This is pure cinematic story telling at it's best.

The combination of stunning cinematography, equally stunning score, and Binoche's brilliant minimal acting (her face alone does most of the heavy lifting!) around sparse, but essential dialogue do the telling, without having to tell you explicitly what's happening - some things are just presented to you as facts, without offering exposition, other things are suggested, and all in a way that allows the viewer to perfectly understand what's going on.

Meditative, delicate, sublime, melancholic, beautiful... and very, very... blue!

Pure art.

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

A philosophy of love...

...And relationships, and how they change.

So I finally caved in on this one, as it just wasn't turning up in the charity shops, and decided to just stream it, to round out the trilogy.

Got to say I was dreading it, as I didn't want to spoil the magic of the first two, as I kind of had a hunch that reality would come crashing in at some point, and here it is.

However, the reality, is a well considered one, and is just as well written as the others, this has not just been tacked on to finish the trilogy...indeed these may be among the finest screenplays ever written, the kind that I should image any actor would hack off a limb to be a part of...

...And from this perspective, this may be the best written, and possibly best acted of the three, due to the actual drama and contention that now exists between the two lead characters, now living together with twin daughters, and on holiday in Greece... and the tension of unspoken, and as yet unsaid acknowledgement of trouble having grown in paradise over the intervening years... Jesse, torn between a desire to have deeper relationship with his son from his previous marriage, and being with the love of his life, and their daughters in that new life, while Celine doesn't feel how "present" he has been in their lives because of this, leading to her stifling the complaint she justly has about this...

...A storm is brewing, and the tension will surely cause it to break at some point.

What these movies do well, is the unspoken things, as well as the spoken, and what lies behind them, as the first two thirds of the movie seems to be moving along ok. with the idyllic life, with only apparent minor "quibbles", which only in the final third, you find out that what they were both really thinking about the situation, and everything they did prior to this section of the film, was not what they were saying, or how they were acting or behaving at the time.

So, quite masterfully, the scenes later, lend a new context, and meaning on what you saw before, and call to mind those previous scenes and make you reflect on them while you watch.

...But also, this applies to the trilogy of films as a whole, as there are both overt, direct references to their previous experiences in those other films, as well as subtle allusions... "easter eggs" which those who have seen them will understand, and so feel the poignancy of.

In fact, rather than simply ruin our daydream of that first, perfect romance, this, I feel, may have the effect of shedding a new light on the other two... knowing what is to come, may add to the power of the experiences of the first movie, and the second, just as each of those has a very powerful affect on how you view this one, which, if you didn't know the romantic past they share, may casue you to view this as a more purely bitter experience - there is, therefore, a kind of cross-chatter between the movies in this trilogy, as you recall events previous as you watch this, and as said, I expect may affect the I view the others in future when I watch them again... giving, together, a "God's eye view" of a whole relationship, and complete working diagram of love, and how it changes over time.... for better, and worse.

This, like the others, is also constructed around the prolonged set piece conversations between them, as they by turns, talk in a car for a good twenty minutes, talk at a dinner party table with friends for another twenty odd minutes, then talk while walking through the local town and surrounding landscape, before the final scene in a small hotel room. So it has all the familiar look and feel, and makes a perfect circle of movies.

Whether you like this one or not, will very much depend on what kind of person you are, and your own appreciation of the experiences they have, based on your own, as well as if, like the two protagonists, are idealistic, cynic, or realist, or any of those things (sometimes together) at different times.

I'm pleased this exists, and it does add a lot, to make this one of the all time great trilogies, as well as each part having a claim to being among the best romantic movies ever made...

But...

Once I've watched the three together in sequence once again, I will mostly only watching the first two (especially the first ) in future... I guess I just want to believe in the romance more than the reality. :)