#41: Three Colours White (1994) April 9, 2007
Posted by badblokebob in : Comedy, Drama, 4 stars, 1990s, world cinema, Krzysztof Kieslowski, 2007 , trackback1994 | Krzysztof Kieslowski | 87 mins | DVD | 15 / R
The second in the trilogy (see #39) features the idea of égalité/equality. The lead character is a Polish immigrant who, at the start, is divorced by his French wife and, in a roundabout way, forced to return to Poland. The narrative follows an odd path toward an odd resolution; it’s also odd that a film about a basic French value is set mostly in Poland. While it has its moments and is certainly intriguing, White comes out as inferior to Blue. I’m looking forward to what Red has in store.
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“it’s also odd that a film about a basic French value is set mostly in Poland.”
Surely it’s even odder that Three Colours: Red is set in Switzerland, a country not exactly renowned for its espousal of French revolutionary values?
In any case, a key theme of Three Colours: White is to examine the notion of ‘égalité’ between the Poles and the French in the supposedly level playing field of post-1989 Europe - something that Kieslowski would have thought about a lot in the early 1990s, given that all his post-89 films were made for French production companies.
In fact, Three Colours: White is in many ways the most interesting of the Three Colours films, in that it’s the only one that explicitly forges links between his later French films and his earlier Polish ones. Aside from Julie Delpy, virtually everyone in the cast is a familiar face from Kieslowski’s pre-89 output, and it’s crammed with sly in-jokes aimed at his long-term fans.