THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE Movie Review

La Double Vie de Veronique

The late Krzysztof Kieslowski's 1991 film picks up in a sense where Ingmar Bergman's Persona left off. In Bergman's 1966 film, the personalities of what may be two separate women (Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson) seem to combine and blend into each other. In Kieslowski's film, two identical women—one living in Poland and one in France—have an enormous number of similarities, or does it only seem that way because of their physical appearance? This mysterious puzzle of a movie—exactly the kind of picture so many timid filmgoers fear they're going to encounter when they hear the term “art film”—suggests many tantalizing possibilities but insists on leaving any conclusions about the inevitability of human behavior or predestination solely on the audience's shoulders. That, of course, is where it belongs, and thanks to the mesmerizing dual performance of Irène Jacob, the fascinating questions that Kieslowski poses become immediate and somewhat scary. This is a journey that will take you to a new destination with each viewing.

NEXT STOP … Blue (Kieslowski), White, Red

1991 (R) 96m/C FR PL Irene Jacob, Phillipe Volter, Sandrine Dumas, Aleksander Bardini, Louis Ducreux, Claude Duneton, Halina Gryglaszewska, Kalina Jedrusik; D: Krzysztof Kieslowski; W: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz; C: Slawomir Idziak; M: Zbigniew Preisner. Cannes Film Festival '91: Best Actress (Jacob); National Society of Film Critics Awards '91: Best Foreign Film. VHS, LV, Closed Caption PAR