It is the first of three films that make up the Three Colours trilogythemed on the French Revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, followed by White and Red. According to Kieślowski, the subject of the film is libertyspecifically emotional liberty, rather than its social or political meaning.
Set in Paris, the film follows a woman whose husband and child are killed in a car accident. Suddenly freed from her familial bonds, she tries to isolate herself and live in seclusion from her former ties. However, she discovers that she cannot escape human connections.
It remains one of Kieślowski's most celebrated works. Julie, the wife of the famous French composer Patrice de Courcy, loses her husband and daughter in an automobile accident but survives herself. While recovering in the hospital, Julie tries to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills but is unable to swallow them.
After being released from the hospital, Julie, who is thought to have helped write much of her husband's famous pieces, destroys what remains of his work. She contacts Olivier, a collaborator of her husband's who has always admired her, and sleeps with him before bidding him farewell.
She empties the family home and puts it up for sale, taking an apartment in Paris near Rue Mouffetard without informing anyone. Her only memento is a mobile of blue beads that is hinted to have belonged to her daughter.
Julie dissociates herself from her past life and distances herself from former friendships. She is no longer recognized by her Regn och Värme, who suffers from Alzheimer's. She reclaims and destroys the unfinished score for her late husband's last commissioned work, a piece celebrating European unity following the end of the Cold War.
Excerpts of its music, however, haunt her throughout the film. Despite her desire to live anonymously and alone, Julie is soon confronted by her past. A boy who witnessed the accident gives her a cross necklace found at the scene and asks her about her husband's last words, the punchline of an indelicate joke.
Julie allows the boy to keep the necklace. Julie also reluctantly befriends Lucille, an exotic dancer who is having an affair with one of her neighbors and is despised by most people in the apartment building. The two women provide emotional support for each other.
While comforting Lucille at the club where she works, Julie sees Olivier being interviewed on TV, revealing that he kept a copy of the European piece and plans to finish it himself. Julie then sees a picture of Patrice with another woman.
Julie confronts Olivier about the European piece and asks him about the woman seen with Patrice. She tracks down Sandrine, a lawyer and Patrice's lover, and finds out that she is pregnant with his child. Julie arranges for Sandrine to have the family home, not yet sold, and eventual recognition of his paternity for the child.
Julie then returns to working on the piece with Olivier and finishes the final part. She calls Olivier, who refuses to take the piece as his own unless Julie is credited as well, to which Julie agrees.