CAT OF THE DAY 042: TROIS COULEURS: BLEU (aka THREE COLOURS: BLUE) (1993)

Julie (Juliette Binoche) finds a family of mice in her cupboard, so she borrows a ginger tom from a neighbour and shuts it in the cupboard with them, after which we hear a loud miaow.

Binoche doesn’t look at all comfortable with the cat, but that might just be because she’s in character; Julie has lost her husband and child in a car accident and has withdrawn from the world into a very nice pad in Paris’s Rue Mouffetard, where she swans around in understated designer knits.

She also goes swimming in the same pool in Rue Pontoise where I used to swim when I lived in Paris, except oddly enough, whenever she swims there it’s deserted, whereas when I went it was always packed with people, and also divided into lanes. I guess maybe the character was rich enough to pay the staff to remove the lanes and keep everyone else out. Or maybe the pool is a metaphor.

Also, if I may say so, if you want to withdraw from life you do not go and live in the Rue Mouffetard. That’s just silly.

Anyhow, though, she gradually finds she needs other people in her life. And also a cat. Everybody needs a cat.

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