art becomes life
by
Douglas Messerli
Krzysztof
Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz (writers), Krzysztof Kieślowski (director) Trois couleurs : Rouge (Three Colors: Red) / 1994
As in
the previous two Three Colors movies,
Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Red is filled
with the coincidence of missed opportunities and choices. This last film of his
triptych—and the last film he ever make before his early death in 1996—represents
the third color of the French flag, and is structured around the concept of
fraternity.
In Red, several couples are seen being pulled apart at the same time they are drawn into new relationships, most of which are for the better. Valentine Dussault (Irène Jacob) is a model who has a relationship, mostly via phone, with an iterant man, who even over the phone seems to be somewhat controlling, angry each time Valentine misses his petulant calls; yet he is the one constantly on the move, from one country to another. We don’t know what he does, but we certainly suspect that he’s not the right man for this beautiful woman.
Across the street from Valentine lives a
handsome young law student, Auguste Bruner (Jean-Pierre Lorit), with a dog.
Auguste too has a mostly telephonic relationship a young woman, Karin
(Frederique Feder), and throughout the film he and Valentine cross paths
without seeing one another—although we do feel somehow that they might make the
perfect couple.
At one point, carrying a stack books,
Auguste drops them, one of the books, his law book, which the wind opens up to
a page which as he goes to pick it up, he carefully rereads. Indeed, in his bar
exam the very next day, he passes by being able to answer the question about
the information he has accidently read. The event, in Kieślowski’s telling, seems quite incidental, yet
like so many of the happenings in this director’s films, it will later be of
great significance.
In the early scenes of the film,
Valentine goes for a photo shoot where she makes various poses, including
blowing up a bubble of gum. But at the last moment the photographer, shooting her
from the side, asks her to look sad. That last photo is blown up, backed in
red, and put in posters throughout the city of Geneva, where she lives.
Soon after, while driving, she accidently
hits a golden retriever and rushes to her side, carrying the large animal into
the car and, after reading a necklace around its neck naming her Rita and
providing the address of her owner. Taking the dog back to the address, she
encounters an open house wherein sits a seeming curmudgeon, Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis
Trintignant), who appears almost disinterested that his dog has been hurt and
shows sorrow in the fact.
Angry about the incident, Valentine
herself takes the dog to the veterinarian where they temporarily bandage her
legs and reveal that Rita is pregnant. Rita takes home the dog; now, like
Auguste, she too has a dog.
When Valentine receives an envelope of
money to pay for the veterinary bill, she returns to Kern’s house to thank him
and tell him that Rita has had pups. But once there, she discovers him eves-dropping
on his neighbors telephone conversations, one in particular, in which a man
living next door, is speaking apparently to a gay lover. Aghast with what she
discovers, Valentine announces that she pities him. Kern challenges her to go
report him the neighbor, which she attempts to do. But when the door is opened
and she is invited in, she discovers a friendly wife and daughter, who call to
their husband upstairs. She hasn’t the nerve to intrude with her knowledge upon
this seemingly happy nuclear family. Returning to Kern she reports her
findings, he replying that he is simply observing, that no matter what he might
do, they will each have their own hell to pay for their actions. Valentine overhears
one more telephone conversation before she leaves, this between a
man (her neighbor Auguste) and a woman (Karin), who she suggests sound like
they are very much in love; but Kern insists that they are night right for each
other, and in a later scene, while attempting to visit Karin, Auguste finds her
in bed with another man. Indeed they are not a happy couple.
A day or so later she reads in the
newspaper about a retired judge who has been served with a class action suit
for listening to his neighbor’s telephone conversations. Valentine again visits
Kern, telling him that she was not the one who reported him, despite her reaction
to his acts. He admits that it was he, himself, who wrote to his neighbors,
denouncing his own behavior. Since it is his birthday, he offers her a special
pear brandy, and the two sit down to a long conversation in which, for the first
time, he opens up to another human being, revealing that he too, when young,
had been in love with a beautiful young woman who left him for another man, and
that he, too, dropped a package of books, one of which opened to a certain page
which helped him pass his law examination.
Much later, as a judge, he found guilty
the very man for whom his former girlfriend had left him; he had not recused
himself, but argues that it was entirely a legal matter, and he requested, soon
after, early retirement. And, later, when Valentine invites him to a modeling
show in which she is participating, he tells her that he knew Karin is not the
right woman for the man because she looks much like the girlfriend of his
youth.
We can only wonder, of course, whether he
might be Auguste himself at another time in life. Will Auguste, having lost his
lover, become a bitter old man later in life? We can only perceive Kieślowski’s
interlinked stories, accordingly, as kinds of parables that demonstrate the
possible choices any—the errors in judgment and the importance of chance—in
each of our lives.
At another moment in their conversations,
Valentine tells him that she will be traveling to England soon to visit her
boyfriend. Kern suggests that she take the ferry.
The morning of the trip, Kern calls a
personalized weather service, to be told by the reporter (who happens to be
Karin) that the channel will have perfect weather, and that she herself is
planning a trip across the channel on a yacht that day with her (new)
boyfriend.
Robert Ebert describes both Kern and
Kieślowski as being a kind of Prospero, which indeed both seem to be. For
suddenly a huge storm rises, and the ferry and yacht are capsized, killing all but six.
The only survivors are Valentine and Auguste—who
pulled out of the water, finally come together for the first time—along with
Julie and Olivier (from the first film Blue), Dominique and Karol (from White) and, almost like a kind a
chaperone, an English bartender named Stephen Killian. Like all the other
films, this one ends in tears, with Valentine, faced in the same direction as
in her photograph, displays the same sadness, but this time with true anguish. Art has become life. But
perhaps in that transformation, life will be better.
Los Angeles,
December 1, 2016
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