It took me many years to finally get round to watching "Three Colours", too long, but at least I have seen it and now own the DVDs.  Oh what a journey that was??!!  I missed the marathon they had at Curzon Soho, when they showed all 3 of them back to back on the same day, I remember though, when my dear friend David, a fellow cinephile, went to see them that day and got so excited afterwards, he called me as he walked, no, floated down Shaftsbury Avenue "Oh Gracie, I just saw 3 absolutely brilliant films and I am now sooooooooooooo excited!!!!"  He yelled down the phone.  I could picture his face in my mind clearly at that point though I was still in my little studio, doing what I no longer remember.  "It was so beautiful and I'm so happy!!!!"

So what to do next but get the DVDs and get stuck in?  "Blue" took my breath away though David's favourite is "Red".  "Red" is probably the most upbeat in the stunningly subtle way of the 3 colours films, but "Blue" had me gagging at the screen, slack-jawed and teary-eyed.  The first surprise, blissful surprise, is when Julie turns at the call of her name, in a dark room with very limited light source, tinged with the colour blue.  She turns and instead of a cut to the owner of the voice that calls to her, the screen goes black and a soaring, grand concerto starts on the sound track.  For a few seconds' lapse, there is nothing on the screen, no movement, no other sounds but the beautiful, heavenly music, that, in that moment, is unlike anything that I had ever heard.And Julie Binoche, oh my... how can someone inspire such emotions in the viewers by seemingly doing nothing at all?  And how very beautiful, how very classy... the blankness of her expression runs so deep, chocked full of her history, no, her character's history, regrets, joy, loss, sorrow, nostalgia, there is just... so much in that nothingness of her face...  This thought came to me one day during my class with Paul, the private drama coach who I have known for the past 3 - 4 years... if not more.  He was telling me about the importance of the moment of now, grand gestures of the days gone by use to hide a multitude of sins for an actor, the gestures can be so distracting that no one else would notice if they were actually not in the moment, well, surely that is a form of cheating?  If an emotion is genuinely felt and experienced in that moment, nothing more is needed but a face.  Just a face, which needs not show anything at all and by doing so showing everything that is within the person.  At that poinst I thought... One is never more honest, then when one is acting , which probably renders the word "acting" faulty and... well, just doesn't make sense.  But is there better acting, than an emotion genuinely, honestly felt?  And that is what Julia Binoche shows me...Now that I really think about it, no, I haven't "made it", in the way that everyone defines making it, I  haven't been paid millions for anything that I did, damn, so far I haven't even been paid for any of the short film in which I played the lead, but close-ups I had, extreme close-ups I had too... playing the lead, that I had too, holding my concentration and being honest to myself and everyone else, so much so that the cameras could detect no "acting", as there was no more severe judge of a liar than a camera when it pulls in for a close-up.  In that moment, I believed absolutely that I were whoever/whatever I had been cast to be, and I became her/it.I believed it absolutely and unfalteringly.