TROIS COULEURS: ROUGE Movie Review
Three Colors: Red Red
Irène Jacob is Valentine, a stunning young fashion model in Geneva whose life unexpectedly intersects with an unhappy, voyeuristic, retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant in a warm, dignified, extremely welcome performance) in the third film in Krzysztof Kieslowski's extraordinary and audacious Trois Couleurs trilogy. The seeming randomness of their meeting—allowing them both to discover the possibility of new worlds and new ways of looking at those worlds—is the real subject of this rather daring and risky film, which works dramatically in ways that depend on what is a genuinely radical conceptual gamble that pays off thrillingly. Kieslowski and his brilliant composer, Zbigniew Preisner, have created in Rouge—the color of the French flag that stands for fraternity, but is also associated with violence, eroticism, and life—a portrait of individuals discovering the basic but too-often-neglected joy of possibility, and of the innumerable parallel universes that can be entered simply by seizing one of those possibilities—or perhaps more than one. These ideas are never stated directly, but the movie's physical form makes them stand out in stark, exquisite relief. When Kieslowski's camera races along miles of parallel telephone cables, tracking the destination of a single call to one telephone as opposed to any one of millions of others, the mind opens up to the infinite choices we take for granted, and that we tend to put off until another day. Kieslowski proves with his choices that the cinema is always capable of more than we imagine, because, as his film reminds us, there are so many other imaginations we've yet to encounter. (The major stars of the first two films in the trilogy make unobtrusive and amusing cameo appearances.) Academy Award Nominations for Best Director, Screenplay, and Cinematography.
NEXT STOP … Trois Couleurs: Bleu, Trois Couleurs: Blanc, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
1994 (R) 99m/C FR PL SI Irene Jacob, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Frederique Feder, jean-Pierre Lorit, Samuel Lebihan, Marion Stalens, Teco Celio, Bernard Escalon, Jean Schlegel, Elzbieta Jasinska; Cameos: Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Benoit Regent, Zbigniew Zamachowski; D: Krzysztof Kieslowski; W: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz; C: Piotr Sobocinski; M: Zbigniew Preisner. Cesar Awards ‘94: Best Score; Independent Spirit Awards ‘95: Best Foreign Film; Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards ‘94: Best Foreign Film; New York Film Critics Awards ‘94: Best Foreign Film; National Society of Film Critics Awards ‘94: Best Foreign Film; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘94: Best Cinematography, Best Director (Kieslowski), Best Original Screenplay; Cesar Awards ‘94: Best Actor (Trintignant), Best Actress (Jacob), Best Director (Kieslowski), Best Film; Golden Globe Awards ‘95: Best Foreign Film. VHS, LV MAX