Number two of Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy of films titled after the colors of the French flag. Each tale is independent of the others, notwithstanding minor points of intersection: the heroine of Blue, Juliette Binoche, pokes her head apologetically into a courtroom in White. This second one has to do with a Polish hairdresser who, unable to consummate his marriage, is given the boot by his French wife (the humiliations pile up fast and thick: birdshit on his shoulder; puking in a public restroom; a confiscated ATM card; on and on), and who returns alone to his native country, intent on winning back his wife through an increasingly far-fetched and long-leaping scheme of real-estate trickery and a faked funeral. (Considering her complaint with him, his first line upon his reunion with his wife is most unfortunate: "I wanted you to come.") The real problem with the movie, which boasts the director's customary visual frills and soul-on-sleeve style of performance, is not that the hero's elaborate expression of love and devotion is unromantic; is unpoetic; is unlyrical: the prosaicness, the "unsexiness," of real estate is presumably part of the desired effect. The problem is that it's uncinematic; unsuited to the medium; unfollowable on screen. Zbigniew Zamachowski, Julie Delpy. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
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