ABSTRACT
In Trois Couleurs: Bleu there is a brief scene where Julie, the film's protagonist, played by Juliette Binoche, goes to visit her mother in a maison de retraite. The film cuts quickly from the institution grounds to the interior of the maison de retraite and a close-up of a photo frame which encloses several images: a smiling girl with long hair, a child and a sepia photo of a wedding. The film plays with reflection and virtual images on several levels, allowing the photographs to be overlaid by reflected images of a scene of recognition between mother and daughter. Indeed, in representations of amnesia, memory disturbance and forgetting, films may be seen to question the role of the viewer and the possible analytic function of viewing. This assertion may lead us to a series of questions about the ways in which filmmakers may give themselves, and their spectators, privileges over the traumatized or amnesiac protagonist.
