(France/Poland 99m) DVD1/2
Aka. Trois Couleurs: Rouge
Geneva fraternity
p Marin Karmitz d Krzysztof Kieslowski w Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz ph Piotr Sobocinski ed Jacques Witta m Zbigniew Preisner art Claude Lenoir
Irène Jacob (Valentine Dusseau), Jean-Louis Trintignant (Judge Joseph Kern), Jean-Pierre Lorit (Auguste), Frédérique Feder (Karin), Samuel Lebihan (photographer), Juliette Binoche (Julie, from Blue), Benoit Régent (Olivier, from Blue), Julie Delpy (Dominique, from White), Zbigniew Zamachowski (Karol Karol, from White),
Let me not waste words; Three Colours: Red is one of the greatest films of its decade by a director at the summit of modern European cinema. Kieslowski’s whole oeuvre is ripe for discovery by millions of people, from his masterful Dekalog through La Double Vie de Véronique to this final trilogy. Though he was planning another trilogy on heaven, hell and purgatory, which was incomplete after his death in 1996, surely even he couldn’t have topped matched this, the final part in his Tricolor trilogy, based on the symbolism of fraternity, and the last of his Tales of Three Cities (Paris, Warsaw and Geneva).
Valentine is a young student and model in Geneva. Her boyfriend is being unfaithful with a woman who is also being unfaithful to her partner, a young judge. One day Valentine runs over a German shepherd, which she traces back to its owner, a retired judge, who likes to listen in to the phone conversations of those in his neighbourhood.
Although we can all appreciate the liberty and equality of the earlier films, the fraternity on show in the latter is the one we have most empathy with. Red is a warm colour, symbolic of the blood that courses through our veins and keeps us alive. Our judge friend is barely living at all when first we meet him, seemingly indifferent to his pet’s plight. When he says he needs nothing, Valentine replies “then stop breathing.” He can only say “good idea.” She brings the warmth into his life that he has lacked for so long and which he has had to fill with his privacy invading, illegal eavesdropping. It was his way of connecting with the world, but it was also withdrawing him from it. Realising his error, he can only offer his young friend, who he perhaps realises is the woman he’d have loved had she come into his life a generation earlier, one word of advice; “BE!”
It’s in this film that many of the motifs come full circle. We know we’re in the same world when Valentine’s unfaithful lover says he had his car stolen in Poland (one of the crooks we saw in White, perhaps?). The lady near the bottle bank is there, too, and this time, symbolising fraternity, our heroine helps push it in for her. The colour of red is perhaps less prevalent than in the earlier instalments (a four by four car, a poster, the fashion house décor, the ferry tickets, etc), but fraternity itself is very much in evidence, as is Kieslowski’s penchant of fate and lives interlocking, carried forward from Dekalog, Véronique and the earlier portions of the trilogy. The finale is a delicate twist of fate that reunites the protagonists of all three films and the performances are so superbly crafted as to resemble intricate Fabergé eggs, the removal of one gesture of which would break them. Jacob is incredibly soulful as the compassionate Valentine, entering the judge’s house like Alice entering wonderland, and Trintignant recalls his former glories (from Bardot’s lover and and off screen in Et Dieu Créa la Femme to The Conformist) as the cynical but ultimately humanitarian old judge. Mention also must be made of the photography, elliptical script and the trademark gorgeous score from Preisner, which fills one full of a love of mankind we never knew we had. Yet this is Kieslowski’s triumph, and when the heroine murmurs that “I feel something important is happening around me”, you’d better believe it. You’ve witnessed cinematic history. If Ozu’s mantra was “isn’t life disappointing?”, Kieslowski’s has to be “isn’t life full of surprises?” If Blue was best watched alone and White with a partner, this is a film to watch with a platonic friend of the opposite sex, someone to hug and hold on to as the credits roll and Preisner’s score envelops you.
This review, Alan, is my candidate for the best in the series so far. Gorgeous stuff. Makes me want to love the movie more than I ever have…
Yes, JAFB, there’s no doubt this one of Allan’s greatest reviews ever. His control and complete understanding of this Trilogy makes for a commanding appraisal with a hefty dose of appreciation. He’s at his best here, and this film is a masterpiece.
I just have to ask, why is this at number six if you say:
“Three Colours: Red is the greatest film of its decade”
???
Dennis picked it, David. Actually I had amended the essay but then went and pasted the old copy. Durgh! I have amended it now.
DAVID-I think Allan may have written this review a few years or months back and had a reevaluation. We all do it. In any case: WHOA!!!! What an essay! I fully agree with the others that this may be Allan’s best essay ever. His intense dissection of the film is matched by the choicest words and sentence structure. This review truly sings. As for RED, what can one say? On any given day I could easily switch my No. 1 film from BLUE to this great work and back again. As I said on another blog role; Kieslowski was the director of the decade. No other film-maker probed humanity, spirituality, coincidence and soul better than he did and with the visual gusto of a Kubrick or Yimou or Spielberg. This movie is hypnotic from frame one. Sam and I saw this one in a six movie run in NYC in 1994 (it was the fourth of the day) and we both knew after seeing it that not only would no film that day compare but that it was easily the best of the year. You just sat there dumb-founded by the brilliance. Art of the highest order.
The chemistry between Irene Jacob and the great Jean Louis Trintignant works like a complex dance between morality and innocence. Preisners score is evvocative of the Hitchcock work of Bernard Herrman and Sobicinski’s cinematography is brilliant in its coldness at start point and lusly warm as the coincidence intensifies. There are sequences in this film that never leave you. Augusts climb up the side of the building to find his girlfriend getting nailed by another man. Jacob’s face bathed in sunlite as she drinks down the water. The haunting moment Trintignant shares with Jacob as he lays out the story of his test. The presents itself at first like a dream, then brilliantly turns into that deja-vu feeling you’ve seen this all before. Hypnotic, in the best sense of the word, is the only way to describe it. Unforgettable works too.
Yes, an excellent review, really makes me want to see this movie. I only saw Blue (it was the one 3 Colors film my local library has; for some reason, if there’s only 1 3 Colors film available it’s usually that one – the popularity of Binoche, perhaps?) but was always drawn by the imagery from this poster, even though you say it actually doesn’t contain that much red. Looking forward to it.
I read the essay with pleasure and admiration, because it does full justice to the best movie of the decade:
I;m not one of those who is easily moved to tears in a movie theater, but when I saw this for the first time, they came: I realized I’d just seen the masterwork of a peerlessly great director working at the height of his skills. And he had the greatest of actors to help him.
Trintignant’s performance is magically intuitive–not a glance or touch or breath wrong in this complex portrait of a tragic, self-hating old judge who slowly, somewhat creakingly, but in the end with brio, reconnects with humanity. And I won’t apologize for that corny phrase, because doesn’t Kieslowski use Michelangelo’s image of God touching Adam’s hand?
It’s a performance which can be savored in every moment, including the ones that seem minor: the early one where Trintignant reveals his despair by slackly pouring teawater on the floor, staring blankly into Jacob’s eyes; or the much later one where he’s made the momentous decision (for Jacob’s sake) to venture out, pulls open the stiff doors of his garage and eyes his dusty, undriven, but (under the dirt) superb old car with a knowing and accepting eye.
And then we have the last image of all (yes, I’ll admit it’s probably my favorite in cinema) of Trintignant’s face, surrounded by shattered glass because his neighbors have been heaving rocks through his window. He has just found out his young friend survived a great disaster. He is smiling slightly, but it’s not an empty or naive grimace. It’s the hard-earned response of one who has experienced the torture of misfortune, grief and loss–but who is strong enough to smile anyway.
While THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE is probably my fave Kieslowski film, this one is a close, close second for the reasons you stated so eloquently in your post.
MARGARET-YES! Beautifully pontificated. I couldn’t agree with you more. While Jacob usually takes the biggest bows for her innocently sexy turn of a girl confused by what fate is laying out for her, its really Trintignants show all the way. He cements, with his ease, every sequence to the point that his character hovers over even scenes he is not present in. There is a stirring immediacy to his movements when he finally gets up from his chair and ventures into the world that he thought had no use for him once. What also blows me away about him is the sexual chemistry that slowly reveals itself between him and Jacob. With every turn, word or act of hospitality (pouring the wine, handing Rita over to Valentine) you can FEEL the desire and intrique they have for each other. A lesser actor, I think, would not have been able to embue the Judge with the hints of the man he once was. Here, Trintignant, though up in years, leaves you with the spirit of a primed man hiding deep within the shell of one forgotten.
I absolutely agree with you, Dennis, that it’s Trintignant’s show all the way! One of the fascinating things about his performance is that although it’s completely without vanity or any actorly tricks, and he allows himself to look frankly old and even (in the beginning) ill-kempt, gradually his timeless attractiveness emerges as his character warms to life. In the beginning he wears his face like a death mask; but the self he had lost re-emerges with friendship, and suddenly for the first time in the film we begin to notice the fine conformation of his head; his good, strong nose which looks as though it could outface death itself; his eyes and smile. It’s one of my theories that ALL actors probably started out as beautiful young men (including Walter Slezak and Burgess Meredith!) but it takes real strength of spirit to end up a fine-looking old man. Compare Trintignant’s face with Kirk Douglas’s taut, scraped face LIFT!
As fantastic review here from Allan. Very well done, I think it’s one of the best I’ve read from you.
I am initially very interested to see if ‘The Double Life of Veronique’ appears… can one director place three films within a decade’s top 11?
My most recent viewing I was (still) amazed how interesting of a story this film is plot-wise. It plays with structure every bit as much as ‘Satanango’ or ‘Pulp Fiction’… yet this again is cerebral, artistic, challenging and yet still so very populist. One can imagine anyone loving this film (not just art film buffs).
On Margaret’s point about the films final smirk: think now how not only does that fantastic smile end this fantastic film, but it’s also the last shot we ever get from a Kieslowski film period. That makes me both sad and triumphantly ecstatic. What a parting shot, huh?
This is a wonderful film indeed. But in a sense the problem here is the inverse of the one with Blue. The latter is a film one admires more than one loves it. With Red it is possible to be so enraptured that one might possibly overrate it. Again a fine film. But I do not know if it can hold its own against the truly outstanding works of the 90s. I do not believe it belongs to the stratosphere of La Belle Noiuseuse or Satantango for example. I might be willing to consider it Kieslowski’s best since the Dekalog. It is probably my ‘favorite’ among his works. But it does not touch greatness.
Incidentally much as Kieslowski’s eminence cannot be denied (though whether the often Baroque pleasures of the Three colors trilogy and certainly Veronique matches the minimalist authenticity of the Dekalog is an open question and I doubt there is an equivalence) I would pick Bela Tarr over him as the greater ‘master’ on the basis of Almanac of Fall, Satantango, Werkmeister Harmonies.
But did the judge, knowing how the weather would change in advance, manoeuvre Valentine to take the ferry… so as to force her & Auguste (in the guise of himself as a younger man) to meet?