The Three Colours trilogy was a colossus of European cinema in the 90s, but its lustre seems to have faded somewhat - none of the films made the recent Sight & Sound top 100.
Here we are though with a 4K restoration of Blue, still getting a raft of 5 star reviews from primarily male critics, but leaving me cold. Blue now looks like a pastiche arthouse movie, populated by luminously beautiful women mooning around Parisian cafes and strip joints with cigarettes in their mouths, and nothing of any consequence happening.
Juliette Binoche is undeniably fine in the lead, but this felt to me like a heterosexual 'male gaze' idealisation of a beautiful grieving woman who needed saving from her affectlessness, and without any amatory investment in her it was difficult for me to engage. The film has none of the intellectual provocation and interest of her work with Michael Haneke, which is much more my thing.
The cinematography is gorgeous, and the few interesting moments are where the camera homes in on beautiful quotidian detail (a cube of sugar absorbing coffee, a leaking brake line, etc).
Here we are though with a 4K restoration of Blue, still getting a raft of 5 star reviews from primarily male critics, but leaving me cold. Blue now looks like a pastiche arthouse movie, populated by luminously beautiful women mooning around Parisian cafes and strip joints with cigarettes in their mouths, and nothing of any consequence happening.
Juliette Binoche is undeniably fine in the lead, but this felt to me like a heterosexual 'male gaze' idealisation of a beautiful grieving woman who needed saving from her affectlessness, and without any amatory investment in her it was difficult for me to engage. The film has none of the intellectual provocation and interest of her work with Michael Haneke, which is much more my thing.
The cinematography is gorgeous, and the few interesting moments are where the camera homes in on beautiful quotidian detail (a cube of sugar absorbing coffee, a leaking brake line, etc).