Lost Souls Find Each Other in `Red' (p1LOST SOULS FIND EACH OTHER IN `RED' EDWARD GUTHMANN, Chronicle Staff Critic RED: DRAMA. STARRING IRENE JACOB AND JEAN-LOUIS Trintignant. Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Written by Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. (Rated R. 95 minutes. In French with English subtitles. At the Bridge, Act One/Act Two in Berkeley, Guild in Menlo Park, Camera 3 in San Jose and Northgate in San Rafael.) In his exquisite film ``Red'' (opening today at Bay Area theaters), Polish film maker Krzysztof Kieslowski tells the story of Valentine, an unlikely fashion model in Geneva, Switzerland. Short and gentle, Valentine walks through life with an air of light expectation, as though she were waiting for something to arrive -- a catalyst, a lover, a reason to move. Played by Irene Jacob, the star of Kieslowski's 1991 film ``The Double Life of Veronique,'' Valentine is half child, half woman. During a fashion shoot, she has to be told to stop chomping her gum. After a job, she drinks from a bottle of spring water, gulping it down rapidly like an 8-year-old tomboy. Jacob is so good in the role, so effective at suggesting a mingling of innocence and intuition, that it's easy to imagine why ``Red'' was written with her in mind. She's like a young Audrey Hepburn, only rounder: delicate, ethereal, emotionally undefended. ``Red'' is the final part in Kieslowski's ``Three Colors,'' a trilogy that draws its titles and themes from the colors of the French flag: ``Blue'' for liberty, ``White'' for equality and ``Red'' for3 fraternity. ``Blue,'' the story of a woman (Juliette Binoche) surviving the loss of her family, was cool and mysterious. ``White,'' a Chaplinesque comedy about a Polish hairdresser's (Zbigniew Zamachowski) failed marriage, was light, goofy and disappointing. ``Red'' is the best of the lot: warmer, more accessible, unusually generous toward its characters. A mystical tale of chance encounters and unexpected connections, ``Red'' uses a traffic accident as a springboard to discovery. One night while driving alone, Valentine accidentally hits a dog, and then traces it to its owner, an embittered, lonely old judge (beautifully played by Jean-Louis Trintignant). Initially, the old man shoos her away, telling her to keep the dog. Shocked by his indifference and yet intrigued, Valentine returns to his house, discovers his secret habit of snooping on people's telephone conversations, and gradually develops a friendship with him, sharing thoughts about loss, morality and their respective pasts. Secure in each other's company, they strip away emotional layers. Looking back on his career, the judge tells Valentine, ``Deciding what is true and what isn't now seems to me a lack of modesty.'' When she asks, ``If I go to court, will there be judges like you?'' he replies, ``Justice doesn't deal with the innocent.'' At the same time, Kieslowski tells a parallel story about Valentine's neighbor Auguste (Jean-Pierre Lorit), a young judge -- the old man's mirror, perhaps? -- whose relationship with a gorgeous weather reporter (Frederique Feder) is falling apart. It's clear that Auguste, handsome and sensitive, is the perfect mate for Valentine, and yet the two never meet, at least during the course of the film, despite their proximity. The most spiritual of contemporary film makers, Kieslowski seems to watch over his characters with kind, paternal regard -- waiting for them to connect, capturing their reactions with his slow, patient camera. It's rare that a film maker treats his subjects with such tenderness and so little cynicism; you don't realize how rare it is until you come across a Kieslowski. Like Max Ophuls (``The Earrings of Madame De . . .''), Kieslowski uses windows as metaphors for emotional barriers. He loves to shoot his characters from outside their apartments or shop windows, as if, like the judge, he were eavesdropping on private thoughts. At other times, he frames them in windows as they gaze out at the world -- puzzling, waiting for answers. Like ``Blue'' and ``The Double Life of Veronique,'' ``Red'' takes the metaphysical for granted. The judge has precognitive dreams about Valentine, and each intuits the other's secrets: Valentine knows that the judge was betrayed in love, just as he knows that her younger brother is in trouble, or that her London- based boyfriend is a boor. There's a father-daughter quality to their relationship, but also the suggestion that had Valentine only been born 40 years earlier, the two of them might have had a long and happy marriage. Whereas ``The Double Life of Veronique'' suggested that each of us has a spiritual twin somewhere in the world, who sees and experiences the world exactly as we do, ``Red'' believes that our perfect partner exists, although often in a physical form we can't recognize. Kieslowski builds toward a surprise ending that embraces elements from the earlier ``Blue'' and ``White'' and reinforces his philosophy of connectedness: that things happen for a reason, that we are not alone, that omens and foreshadowings are all around us, if we pay attention. _________________________________________________________________ 7 DAY: FRIDAY DATE: 12/2/94 PAGE: C1 (c)12/2/94 , San Francisco Chronicle, All Rights Getting http://the-tech.mit.edu/V114/N65/red.65a.html Kieslowski's Red brilliantly concludes French trilogy (p1 of 6KIESLOWSKI'S RED BRILLIANTLY CONCLUDES FRENCH TRILOGY [IMAGE] Krzysztof Kieslowski (left) directs Jean-Louis Trintignant and Irene Jacob in a scene from Red. _________________________________________________________________ Red DIRECTED BY KRZYSZTOF KIESLOWSKI. WRITTEN BY KRZYSZTOF PIESIEWICZ AND KRZYSZTOF KIESLOWSKI. STARRING IRENE JACOB, JEAN-LOUIS TRINTIGNANT, FREDERIQUE FEDER, AND JEAN-PIERRE LORIT. By Scott DeskinArts Editor Those unfamiliar with Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's style may be put off a bit at first. Kieslowski's "three colors" trilogy is one of the more ambitious cinematic statements by a major international director. Kieslowski's films are suited to the art-cinema crowd, but his stories convey genuine emotions in a larger social context. The three films that suit this context, Blue, White, and Red, deal loosely with the French ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, respectively. Blue, the first and moodiest piece, describes the adjustment of a composer's widow who must deal with her husband unfinished symphony and her own unfinished plans for a family. White, a comedy, concerns a Pole who becomes estranged from his French wife, becomes bankrupt, and eventually loses his dignity: He travels back to Warsaw where he plans his financial and marital retribution. But the last film in this trilogy, Red, is at once the most enjoyable and accessible of Kieslowski's works. It's about a young Swiss model and student named Valentine (Irene Jacob) who runs over a dog with her car: When she returns the dog to its rightful owner, a cantankerous, retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant), he acts indifferent. In their first encounter after the dog is patched up, she feels pity for the old man's sadness in solitude, but she is filled with disgust by his hobby of spying on neighbors. He explains that he needs to be in touch with the truth, something that was inaccessible to him as a judge. As he forces her to reveal some of her own personal demons, he confides in her some of his own, memories that have haunted him for decades. Over time, a bond grows between them that suggests an affectionate father- daughter relationship. A parallel story develops that involves a recently graduated law student, Auguste (Jean-Pierre Lorit) and his girlfriend, nicely complementing the relationship between the model and the judge. It's not long before we realize that the young judge's experiences reflect he old judge's misfortunes as a young man. It's also no coincidence that Auguste lives across the street from Valentine: Kieslowski sets up a visual connection between them from the very beginning of the film. The resolution of Red is pretty fantastic, in which all of Kieslowski's ambitions and characters (inclusive of the previous two films) are brought together in a neat package; but, Kieslowski's film is more of a social meditation than an exercise in realism, so we can forgive the director for this. This movie is inviting and very watchable. The performances of all the cast members, especially Jacob and Trintignant, are superb and filled with pathos. Although we get the feeling that the world of the film is unrealistic, the characters all appear tangible and emotionally true. To offset some of the drama, Kieslowski makes tongue-in-cheek references to the other films in the trilogy, and he bathes the surroundings in a warm, reddish hue (just as the other films seem permeated by their title colors). Red is the best film of the series and is one of the best films of last year. It has little to do with the vague symbolic notion of the French virtues that are supposed to make each film cohere, but it is enjoyable and emotionally satisfying. This film may be Kieslowski's personal valentine to the French poetic realist tradition, but from the perspective of a world-wise Pole who happily looks forward to the next century. _________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1995, The Tech. All rights reserved. This story was published on January 18, 1995. Volume 114, Number 65. This story appeared on page 7. Getting http://www.timeinc.com/ew/950120/movies/red.html# RedMovie Review: Red review (p1 of BEYOND THE PALEIrène Jacob finds love among the ruined in `Red'BY OWEN GLEIBERMAN [IMAGE] Link to 42k image IT HAD TO BE CHEW: Fashion model Jacob is the focus of Samuel Lebihan inthe vibrant Red The Polish-born director Krzystof Kieslowski has specialized in casting some of the most beautiful actresses in the world today, and his bejeweled eye is at the heart of what's haunting and irritating about his films. Fixing his camera on the full lips and royal cheekbones of Irène Jacob in The Double Life of Véronique(1991), on-- press space for next page --[IMAGE] Link to 42k image2 the almond-eyed luster of Juliette Binoche in Blue(1993), Kieslowskicreates a new kind of art-house chic. He hypnotizes us with the gorgeous enigma of his actresses' faces, but he also surrounds those faces with extravagantly empty narrative games that keep us from unlocking the mystery. His movies are postmodern perfume commercials in which "tragedy" is treated as a visual fragrance, seductive yet remote. Now, though, in RED (Miramax, R), the conclusion of the tricolor trilogy that began with Blueand White, Kieslowski discovers a new kind of face. His star, once again, is Jacob, who is cast as Valentine, a Geneva fashion model who has reached the dead end of a love affair. But what draws you into the film is the great Jean-Louis Trintignant, who, in late middle age, has become eloquently withered, a haunted mask of suffering. He plays the man Valentine turns to for comfort, a retired judge who is finishing out a lifetime of hard-bitten misery by spying (via phone tap) on his neighbors. Portraying this burnt-out misanthrope, Trintignant lends Red a quality none of the other 3 performers in Kieslowski's films have quite achieved: a primal sense of loss. As the movie progresses, the central event in the judge's life begins to repeat itself in a karmic pattern. Where he was once betrayed by the woman he loved, the same fate now befalls a young man who lives nearby. In bringing him together with Valentine, the judge gives birth to the very passion that he himself was denied. This is a movie about reincarnation, yet for all its delicate mysticism it's as emotionally straightforward, as rooted in its feelings of hope, desire, and pain, as Kieslowski's earlier films were blank and diffuse. The director has said that Redwill be his final film, but my guess is that his retirement will prove to be about as permanent as Davidowie's. After carving out a career as Europe's most dazzling cinematic poseur, Kieslowskihas created his first full-blooded movie. Getting http://www.timeinc.com/time/magazine/domestic/1994/941205/941205.cinemwâ ^C CINEMA: THREE COLORS (p1 of 5 TIME Domestic December 5, 1994 Volume 144, No. 23 WHEN THE JUDGE IS GUILTY LOVE REDEEMS AN ASHAMED, REGRETFUL JURIST IN RED, THE CONCLUSION TO KRZYSZTOF KIESLOWSKI'S FINE THREE COLORS TRILOGY BY RICHARD CORLISS Storytellers are tyrants, masters of sadistic caprice. They invent a character, put him through hell, maybe kill him off - ah, maybe not - to make a moral point, or just because they feel like it. They resemble hanging judges, and sometimes they must feel uneasy about their power over life and death, love and loneliness. Perhaps that is what prodded Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski and his writing collaborator, Krzysztof Piesiewicz (himself a lawyer), to create Three Colors: Red, a movie about a judge racked by guilt, regret and his need to keep eavesdropping on other people's crimes and pain. Decades ago, this Swiss judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) was obliged to determine the case of a defendant with whom he had a personal score to settle - the accused had stolen the only woman the judge had ever loved. The judge passed sentence, then took to a life of electronic snooping on his neighbors. Into this lair of auditory voyeurism comes Valentine (Irene Jacob), a student and fashion model. Her passionate good nature stirs memories of that other young woman in the judge's life. He is touched, perhaps enough to end his sordid pastime. Red is the final installment in the Kieslowski-Piesiewicz Blue, White and Red trilogy. The films treat the subjects of liberty, equality and fraternity in three different countries (France, Poland, Switzerland). Red was shot in Geneva, with a mostly Swiss cast, yet when the Swiss submitted the film for a foreign- language Oscar, the word came down that Red was ineligible - guilty, apparently, of insufficient Swissness. The decision was stupid. Someone should tell the Motion Picture Academy that films are made by individuals, not by nations. Many critics place Kieslowski at the very apex of modern filmmakers. That's wrong, but he certainly forces audiences to do something they are rarely asked to: look at movies. To name your film Red guarantees that the viewer will be as alert as a traffic cop to the color scheme - to the red telephone, awning, sweater, and so on. Kieslowski has a fashion photographer's showy sense of pictorial alienation. He'll isolate Valentine (as in Valentine's Day, heart, red; get it?) in a corner of the film frame or pose her in an attitude of anxious ennui. It's the most literal-minded form of movie expressionism: meticulous, handsome, remote. The style works nicely in Red. Visually and emotionally, this is the director's warmest film. At moments it glows, like the jacket of Valentine's absent lover; the garment's color is reflected in the young woman's face, suffusing her with long-distance affection. And as the friendship between her and the judge ripens into respect and something like love, the emotional crisis in the old man's life is replayed and miraculously resolved (we won't say how). Finally, the filmmakers concoct another miracle to unite the main characters from the trilogy's three episodes. That's the upside of narrative caprice: change your mind, wave a wand and everyone lives happily - or, in Kieslowski's films, thoughtfully - ever after. Copyright 1994, Time Inc. This document was last modified 0:06:22 EST Tue 29 Nov 94. time-webmaster@www.timeinc.com Getting gopher://interlog.com/00/eye.WEEKLY/Movies/movie.reviews/three.colors.r1~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~eye WEEKLY November 24 1994Toronto's arts newspaper .....free every Thursday~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THE AISLE SEAT THE AISLE SEAT review THREE COLORS: RED Starring Irene Jacob and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Screenplay by Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. (STC) Opens Nov. 25. WE ARE NOT AS ALONE AS WE IMAGINE Krzysztof Kieslowski's Red is a fitting end to his remarkable trilogy about human connections-- press space for next page --2by GARY MICHAEL DAULTRed is the concluding film of the already famous Three Colors trilogy by the Polish writer-director Krzysztof Kieslowski, the other two beingBlue ('93) and White ('94). While each film was made to be viewed on its own, it is also rewardingto think of them as making up one sumptuous megafilm, one epic work ofcinema that explores in subtle and insinuating ways Kieslowski's avowedoverall theme for the trilogy: a moral tricolor echoing the structureof the French flag (the films are made in French) -- liberty, equality,fraternity. Blue, the first film of the trilogy, takes place in Paris and is"about" liberty only in the most cataclysmic and bewildering way. Thefilm's protagonist, Julie (Juliette Binoche), loses both her husband, afamous composer, and her daughter in a horrifying automobile accidentin the early moments of the film. Determined to begin a new life --3which may nevertheless entail completing the score her husband waswriting for a concerto in celebration of the unification of Europe --she moves into an anonymous apartment in a working-class neighborhood.With freedom thrust upon her, she begins to interact with others, losing herself in their lives and more or less finding her own again (aprocess that includes the discovery of her late husband's flagrantinfidelities). White is, inasmuch as one can assign these programs to a filmmaker as deft and indirect as Kieslowski, about equality. The film concerns the fate of a Polish hairdresser working in Paris who, divorced and more orless ruined by his wife (Julie Delpy), ends up playing Polish folksongson a comb in the subway. He is eventually helped back to Warsaw by aPolish pal, where he sets about to amass a fortune in real estate andto plot for his wife's emotional and geographical return to him.Ultimately the reverse, you might say, in its externality, of the severings and disjunctions of the elaborately inward, subjective Blue. If Blue is thesis (we are all alone), and White is antithesis (we don't4have to be), then Red is, as might have been expected, synthesis (weare alone, or so it appears, but, in fact, we are perhaps not as aloneas we imagine).As rich and complex as the other two "colors" are, Red -- the mostassertive, the most mortal of the three colors (the color of blood and belonging) -- is most cinematically demanding and rewarding of thethree films. Written with Kieslowski's frequent collaborator KrzysztofPiesiewicz (who co-wrote with him a massive 10-program TV series calledThe Decalogue, 10 films based on the Ten Commandments), Red is set inGeneva. It is "about" connection -- in this case, the strained and altogether unlikely connection ("fraternity") between a beautiful youngstudent and sometime model, Valentine (Irene Jacob, who also starred inKieslowski's The Double Life Of Veronique), and a morose, somehow tragically afflicted retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant). Red begins with a passage of dizzying originality which establisheswith breathtaking effectiveness the dismaying distances that lie between the film's characters. Valentine has a lover. We never see him,however, because he is inevitably hovering just out of her reach, off 5somewhere on business or just off finding himself, avoiding a closeness with her, available to her only by phone. Red opens with a speeded-up filmic plunge through the wires, through the actual circuitry linking her voice with his as they try to makesome connection to one another by phone ("I slept with your jacket," Valentine tells him pathetically; "I saw Dead Poets Society," her boyfriend tells her lifelessly, "what a good movie!"). Clearly this is no life for a woman of Valentine's energies and affections. Then one night -- a night punctuated cinematically with moments of red (the awning of a store, a stop sign, the taillights of cars) -- Valentine (like Julie in Blue) has an automobile accident. Nobody is killed. What happens is that she runs into a German shepherd dog (namedRita) and when she succeeds in finding its owner -- the judge -- he steadfastly and rather cruelly rejects the animal.Valentine keeps the dog and also maintains a strange, complicated,rather otherworldly relationship with the older man, a relationship that is sorely tested by her dismay at the judge's habit (which has the urgency of a sexual perversion) of listening in on his stereo equipment to his neighbors' telephone calls. As packed coincidence as a novel by Thomas Hardy -- odd in an artist as stridently contemporary as Kieslowski -- Red sets up a denselayering of almost congruent stories separated in time but similar inshape. A young law student named Auguste, for example, who lives in anapartment across from Valentine's, is certain he will fail his law exam. On the way to the exam, one of his textbooks falls to the ground,falling open at just the page Auguste needs to pass. Unlikely? Trythis: the very same thing had happened 30 years before to the judge! Auguste, furthermore, is futilely in love with a woman who runs a weather report service. She predicts one day that the weather on the English Channel will be fine and yet on the very day both Valentine and Auguste are to make a ferry voyage to England _ well, you get the idea. And yet, despite the preponderance of coincidence, Red seems sublimely unhindered by plot. Indeed, the film sinks into your sensibility as a welter of visual moments of great beauty, great delicacy, great sad and rather ennobling shards of pure meaning. Irene Jacob is splendid as thequesting Valentine and Jean-Louis Trintignant gives the performance ofhis career as the surly, tender, remote and yet loving judge -- an Olympian, magician- figure, a man who, like Shakespeare's retiringwizard Prospero of The Tempest, is about to renounce his powers. The real magician is Kieslowski. The maestro has announced that Red, the completion of his Three Colors, is to be his last film. He says hehas enough money to keep him in cigarettes and that all he wants now is to sit in a dark room and smoke. And never again see another film.I guess you can believe that if you want to. I don't want to. 4[newscast][`All Things Considered' theme music]-TRANSCRIPT-DANIEL ZWERDLING, Host: Film director Krzysztof Kieslowski has spent thelast five years in France working on what he calls his three colors trilogy. His films Blue, White, and Red take their titles from the symbolism of the French flag. Blue represents liberte, White egalite, and Red fraternate. Back in February when critic Bob Mondello reviewed Blue onour show, he was skeptical about its story, which concerned a bereavedwidow named Julie. He said, in part- BOB MONDELLO, Film Critic: What Julie seems to be seeking liberty from in Blue is the pain that love has caused her, a notion saccharine enough thatnot even actress Juliette Binoche, looking soulful, can entirely redeem it. ZWERDLING: On the other hand, when Bob reviewed White a few months later,5he said its story about a Polish husband who seeks equality with his Frenchwife has made him reconsider Kieslowski, especially the director's ideasabout exploring ideals through relationships. MONDELLO: White makes that concept more appealing than Blue did, andfrankly makes the earlier film look better in retrospect. ZWERDLING: Now the third part of the trilogy, Red, is finally opening thisweekend around the country, and we asked Bob to tell us how it approachesthe concept of fraternity and affects the rest of the trilogy. MONDELLO: One rainy night in Geneva, a gorgeous Swiss model named Valentineis driving home from a photo session when she accidentally collides with aGerman Shepherd. Krzysztof Kieslowski's film Red is all about collisions -clashes of will, of personality, and of world view - but this physical collision is perhaps its most important for it brings Valentine togetherwith the dog's owner, a bitter retired judge who is every bit as anti-social as Valentine is outgoing. When she arrives at his home with theinjured animal in her car, the judge ignores her knock until it's clear shewon't leave him alone. Valentine, who is played by Irene Jacob, the haunting star of Kieslowski'sDouble Life of Veronique, is puzzled when the judge doesn't react to thenews of his pet's injury, but mere indifference turns out to be the leastof his oddities. This is a man, played crustily by Jean-Louis Trintignant,whose only connection with the outside world is that he spends his days eavesdropping electronically on his neighbor's phone calls. Valentine findsthis about as repulsive as the judge finds her interference in his affairs,and from their mutual loathing comes an odd almost inexplicable bond offriendship.Like the other two stories in Kieslowski's trilogy, Red is about the transformative power of human contact. It isn't really a love story but itplays like one, a complicated, interconnected one at any rate, where whatappear to be detours and distractions always lead to greater understanding.One seemingly irrelevant sequence from the previous film where elderly persons struggle to get bottles into recycling bins has a lovely payoff in this one, and the finale finds all of the trilogy's principal characters7literally in the same boat, an expression of fraternity that would be toughto top.You don't need to have experienced the icy reserve of Blue or the comic brio of White to appreciate Red, but if you have seen those earlier films,and both are now available on video so there's no reason not to, this lastinstallment in Kieslowski's trilogy will seem infinitely richer; also sadder, since the 53-year-old director has announced that it is the lastfilm he will ever make. If that's true, he will certainly have gone out with a bang, for the last 20 minutes of Red are effortlessly the finest filmmaking of this year, visually stunning, emotionally haunting, and likenothing else at your local cineplex.