Julie (Juliette Binoche), wife of the famous composer Patrice de Courcy, must cope with the death of her husband and daughter in an automobile accident she herself survives. While recovering in hospital, Julie attempts suicide by overdose, but cannot swallow the pills. After being released from hospital, Julie, who it is suggested wrote (or helped to write) much of her husband's famous pieces, destroys what is left behind of them. Calling Olivier (BenoÃ®t RÃ©gent), an unmarried collaborator of her husband's who has always admired her, she spends a night with him and says goodbye. Emptying the family house and putting it up for sale, she takes an apartment in Paris without telling anyone, her only memento being a mobile of blue beads that the viewer assumes belonged to her daughter.
Julie disassociates herself from all past memories and distances herself from former friendships, even being no longer recognised by her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. She also reclaims and destroys the unfinished score for her late husband's last commissioned workâa piece celebrating European unity following the end of the Cold War. Snatches of its music, however, haunt her throughout the film.
Despite her desire to live anonymously and alone, life in Paris forces Julie to confront elements of her past that she would rather not face. A boy who saw the accident seeks her out to give her a Christian cross he found by the car and to repeat her husband's last words, the punchline of an indelicate joke. She reluctantly befriends an exotic dancer named Lucille (Charlotte VÃ©ry) who is having an affair with one of the neighbors and helps her when she needs moral support. Then on TV she sees Olivier in an interview, announcing that he will try to complete Patrice's commission and showing pictures of Patrice with an attractive young woman.
While trying both to stop Olivier from completing the score and to find out who her husband's mistress was, she becomes more engaged in her former life. She tracks down Sandrine (Florence Pernel), Patrice's lover, and finds out that she is carrying his child; Julie arranges for her to have her husband's house, not yet sold, and recognition of his paternity for the child. This provokes her to restart her relationship with Olivier and to collaborate with him after all.
In the final sequence, part of their completed Unity of Europe piece is played (which features chorus and a solo soprano singing in Greek the praise of divine love in Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians) and images are seen of all the people Julie has affected by her actions. The final image is of Julie, cryingâthe second time she does so in the film.[4]
Who saw the accident?
A boy