Viewers of Blue meet a young wife and mother, Julie, who loses both husband and daughter in the opening moments of this film. We know from the film’s title and positioning in the series that it is intended to be a meditation on the French concept of Liberte which Kieslowski has stated is perfected inside modern France. If he believes this, he also understands that perfection may be complicated.
Inside of the film’s narrative we meet a young man named Antoine. He is vague and handsome. When we initially meet him he is playing a simple old game, marking his age as being fully adolescent if not on the more innocent portion of that particular spectrum. He is sitting with skateboard along a two-lane country road as the car with Julie and her family speeds by. He looks up to regard them and then shifts his attention back to his game. We hear the sound of the car crash off screen and Antoine is startled. He runs to check on the passengers as a beach ball rolls out of the back seat and into the field.
The next time we meet Antoine, he contacts Julie via her doctor’s office. He found a gold cross on a chain he assumes belongs to Julie and wants to return it to her. As she speaks to Antoine on the phone and he tells her the reason for his call, her hand goes to her neck as she realizes, perhaps for the first time, that her cross is missing. Up to this point Julie has spent her energy divesting herself of her former life, making a residential move and jettisoning links to her family. She seems determinedly desperate to escape the weight of grief that likely accompanies this circumstance. She signals her reluctance to carry such a cross when she gives it to Antoine. In essence she saddles him with the proverbial cross the state faith of France would otherwise ask her to carry. The work she instead picks up may be considered to be a postmodern carrying of a cross. The work involved in leaving her grief behind, liberating herself from it, is carrying a different cross. Furthermore, it will not be recognized by any religion as an apt role for a woman.
We meet Antoine once more as the film ends. During the montage in which we quickly revisit all Julie’s entanglements she finds during the film’s course of events we see an early morning tableau featuring Antoine. Bathed in cool colors he turns off his alarm and sits up in bed. Shirtless he wears the gold cross; the fact that he has worn it to sleep signals a habit of wearing it. He is carrying the cross of memory, perhaps the moment his childhood innocence suffered its first marring, into adulthood. The camera pans right and we move on to remaining montage items. Antoine’s innocence and willingness to bear this weight when Julie forsakes it signals a type of postmodern hagiography. He is disconnected, but linked to this defining event and carries a memento of the moment. Just as his namesake, Anthony of Padua, he bears a weight that he didn’t choose, but one that chose him. It’s a wound that he must now discern and assimilate as he goes forward into adulthood. And he won’t have the benefit of any institution telling his story.
