‘Red’ traces relationship at relaxed French pace
Third Kieslowski installment presents fascinating, haunting view
of fraternity
By Lael Loewenstein
Daily Bruin Staff
The third installment in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors
Trilogy, Red is a fascinating, at times hauntingly beautiful film.
Like its predecessors Blue and White, Red deals with relationships,
love, loss and longing. While Blue focused on a woman’s struggle
for liberty and White centered on a husband’s quest for equality,
Red deals with fraternity, a much subtler and more complex
condition.
Red centers on Valentine (Irène Jacob), a lovely young
woman suffering from loneliness and a sort of spiritual malaise in
Geneva. Valentine, a model, feels disconnected from everyone and
everything in her life. She speaks often by phone with her unseen,
boorish boyfriend who is away in England, and occasionally with her
drug-addicted brother. But she rarely has face-to-face contact.
That changes rather suddenly when, driving home one day, she
accidentally hits a dog. Reading its address on the dog’s tag,
Valentine goes to seek its owner. What she finds is a cold and
bitter old man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who tells her to keep the
dog.
Miffed, Valentine takes the dog to the vet and then home with
her. But when the dog runs away one day, leading her back to its
mysterious owner, Valentine follows. Observing, to her disgust,
that the old man, a retired judge, eavesdrops on his neighbors’
phone conversations, she urges him to stop. Intrigued, he wants her
to return.
A series of conversations between Valentine and the old man
follow, during which each peels the protective layers off the
other. We learn that the judge was once terribly hurt by a woman
many years ago, and that Valentine carries her pain with her
everywhere.
That these two disparate souls can reach out to each other, come
to understand and care for each other, is the heart of Red. But
they never experience sexual involvement, only emotional and
spiritual. Because they are so far apart in age, they can only
contemplate what might have been. Valentine might have been the
judge’s soul mate. And he seems to understand her better than
anyone else.
Beautifully directed, the conversations between judge and
Valentine are as warm, subtle and delicate as anything Kieslowski
has yet committed to film. Trintignant and Jacob are exquisite
actors, and as they bare themselves emotionally to one another,
their pain seems real. Although Red lacks much in the way of plot,
the actors’ performances compensate for that deficiency.
The ending of the film should remain a secret. But Kieslowski
deftly ties together Blue, White and Red, making an immense and
lush cinematic tapestry. The director has said this would be his
last film. It would be a pity if that turns out to be true.
FILM: Melnitz Movies presents Red. Tonight at 7:30, Melnitz.
Admission is free. For more info call (310) 825-2345.