Three Colors: Red
aka Trois couleurs: Rouge
First screened in December 1995 / Most recently screened and reviewed in May 2021
Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski. Cast: Irène Jacob, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Frédérique Feder, Jean-Pierre Lorit, Sameul Le Bihan, Marion Stalens, Jean Schlegel, Elzbieta Jasińska, Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Zbigniew Zamachowski. Screenplay: Krzysztof Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz.

 VOR: ⑤  Enormously influential on filmmakers all over the world. Climax of a trilogy that invigorated conversations in public film culture and scholarship.


   
Photo © 1994 MK2 Productions / France 3 Cinéma / Miramax
I would love to be able to go all the way with Krzysztof Kieślowski. For me, his fondness for heavy-handed conceit can occlude what is nimble and delicate in the same movies; the pervasive signaling of allegory or of metaphysical exploration can feel like an alibi for iffy writing and detached notions of human behavior. Clearly I'm resisting something, since my qualms always surge to mind first when I think about Kieślowski, despite how much I've admired most of his films that I've seen. Even the one that left me cold, The Double Life of Véronique, has plenty to recommend it.

The swift, steady pacing of Three Colors: Red is one of my favorite aspects. Despite setting the stage for a more ponderous drama, and occasionally indulging more philosophical Discourse than it really needs ("I love my brother but don't know what to do for him." / "Just be." / "What?" / "BE."), the movie has a quotidian rhythm, in a good way. While Valentine (Irène Jacob) negotiates her unexpected encounter and up-and-down, ongoing journey of mutual recognition with the morally mercurial ex-judge Joseph (Jean-Louis Trintignant, forever an asset), she also rides a steady current of errands, classes, professional gigs, plan-making, calls home, calls abroad. She seems to have a life, not just a role in a parable, which gives Red a welcome, accessible temperature and keeps its more meditative elements from drifting into pure abstraction.

Arresting moments are plentiful, from the poker-faced comedy of a German shepherd crashing a solemn cathedral service to Joseph accidentally pouring out his scalding teapot on his rug, mid-conversation with Valentine. I'm sure the latter wasn't improvised—little if anything in Kieślowski is—but Trintignant makes it feel improvised, injecting some welcome, disruptive energy into the movie's burnished ambience. A rapturous image from one of Valentine's modeling jobs, gazing with forlorn sensuality against (what else?) a swooning field of red, is a powerful, flexible leitmotif across many moments of the film, even before Kieślowski reveals an even grander design behind this image in the final shot.

Then again, what exactly does that final recurrence of this iconic advertisement, abruptly reframed in such a different register, really mean? I wouldn't worry as much if Kieślowski weren't constantly suggesting that everything Means something. He's so talented at shooting people, objects, and light itself such that they quiver with elliptical, self-referential energies, but his movies can become top-heavy with those energies. A close up on some stereo equipment isn't just stereo equipment, it's Modern Life, coldly construed. Valentine's job as a model, and much of how Jacob is photographed throughout, suggest some earnest mulling of The Image. We all know red isn't just red, but an intimation of Fraternity—but is it philistinism or sacrilege to say that the images, gorgeous as they are, sort of overdo it on the color front? I enjoy a movie that doubles as a seminar, but I go back and forth about how illuminating Kieślowski's seminars are, especially when they make other aspects of his films seem laminated with strained effects, verging on self-importance when there's already plenty else to savor, think about, and marvel at. Grade: B+

Academy Award Nominations:
Best Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski
Best Original Screenplay: Krzysztof Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Best Cinematography: Piotr Sobociński

Golden Globe Nominations:
Best Foreign Language Film

Other Awards:
Film Independent Spirit Awards: Best Foreign Film
National Society of Film Critics: Best Foreign Language Film
New York Film Critics Circle: Best Foreign Language Film
Los Angeles Film Critics Association: Best Foreign Film
Boston Society of Film Critics: Best Foreign Language Film
Chicago Film Critics Association: Best Foreign Language Film
César Awards (French Oscars): Best Original Score (Zbigniew Preisner)
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