Dead Poses for a Blue Beauty

By RICHARD CORLISS

Most serious European directors would never admit it -- they'd say it's a form of movie idolatry endemic only to Hollywood -- but they love to stargaze. They will put an attractive actress on-screen for 1 1/2 hours and mostly . . . just . . . watch . . . her. She poses at a window, she listens to the phone ring; in a moment of high agitation she may drag on a Gauloise. A vision of dyspeptic distress, she is a modernist pinup for the monastic voyeur behind the camera. When the woman is lovely, pouty Juliette Binoche, and the director is Krzysztof Kieslowski, the picture can become the X ray of anguish: not stargazing but soul gazing.

Kieslowski, a Polish filmmaker now working in France, has an imposing European reputation from his 10-part series The Decalogue (still unreleased in the U.S.). His Franco-Polish The Double Life of Veronique earned its star, Irene Jacob, the best-actress award at last year's Cannes Film Festival. His new Blue won Binoche the best-actress prize this September in Venice. So Kieslowski knows two or three things about showcasing beautiful women. He gives them an identity crisis, locks them alone in a Paris apartment and puts their chic, bleak spirits handsomely on display.

In Blue, Julie (played by Binoche) has every reason for her swank suffering. Her composer husband and their young daughter have died in a car crash from which Julie barely escaped. So she hides away from her friends and herself. "I don't want any love, memories, belongings," she says. "Those are traps." It takes her the length of the film to realize that isolation is the deadliest snare, that the only release is art and passion. But the true drama can be found in Kieslowski's meticulous images. Cool and seductive, they are the perfect frame for Binoche's harried glamour.