Julie begins the film with a husband and and eight year old daughter. They are swiftly removed from the picture by the age old film method ‘car crash’. ‘Car Crash’ is always good because it means you can wipe out whole families at once and let who ever needs to escape relatively unscathed. Julie has a couple of black eyes and looks terrible for a few weeks, but nothing too serious. With her family gone Julie has nothing else to live for, so is free to exact terrible retribution on the people who cut the brake cables in the crappy French car they were driving home. This isnt a racist slur, French cars in the 90’s were really crap. As she seeks them out, one by one they are tortured into talking, revealing an increasing circle of conspiracy and plot, eventually leading Julie into a murky underworld where concert music is bought, sold and consumed by Paris’ criminal underbelly. She finds out that her husband was known as ‘the maestro’ and led an orchestra known as much for their brutal method of disposing of their enemies ‘the viola of pain’ as they were for their conchertos. Unfortunately for ‘the maestro’, and for Julie there is a new conductor in town, and he favours the trombone. Actually what really happens is this (…rather more boring plot). Julie was married to a very famous composer, because of this when he dies she is free to mourn in any way she chooses, rather than having to get on with her life like any normal person would. As a consequence she becomes at first something of a bitch. As the world throws more shit her way, which we should note the discovery of which is entirely her own doing (she categorically wouldnt have found out any of the stuff she does if she had just gone and got a job or a hobby) she becomes slightly less of a bitch, or we just start to feel more sorry for her so it makes it more ok. The whole Three Colours trilogy has rather entered the cannon, its supposedly classic stuff, and it is definitely really outstanding film making, thought provoking and exceptionally deep, it just could have used ‘the viola of pain’.