Three Colors: Red (1994)

Kieslowski's films are mostly character driven and yet he often uses high drama to create a far more complex lens to observe his subjects. In Blue the inciting incident was a deadly car accident. It seems only fitting that he would end his story with the catastrophic sinking of a ferry. He takes the same bleak, no nonsense approach with little fanfare that he used before. It's his way.

In fact Three Colors: Red as a whole is another simplistic film in plot and yet the irony is that the film is chock full of complexity because its major point of interest is interpersonal relationships (as suggested by the intertwining phone lines shown early on). There is not much more tangled and intricate about humanity than our relationships.

As such this final installment is in many ways a story about love, romance and friendship and yet Kieslowski does not find it necessary to preach to us. He is better and more thoughtful than that, laying out the story for us to ponder and mull over. This is the story or better yet the parable he created.

Valentine (Irene Jacob) is a young student and model who is constantly an innocent and sympathetic figure with a pair of doe eyes. She is often shown in profile which continually reveals her youthful and even sullen beauty. She is even the somber poster girl of a gum campaign plastered around town. There's a boyfriend in her life who she's desires the affection of and then a brother who is hooked on drugs. In other words, life is far from rosy and secure.

One day she accidentally runs over a dog that she takes it to the owner (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who seems surprisingly unconcerned by the event. She does the only thing she can do with a clear conscious which is taking the dog to the vet and then taking care of it. Soon after Valentine finds herself walking the dog by the old man's house once more and she discovers what he does all day. It turns out he is a retired judge and he spends his solitary existence eavesdropping on the conversations of others (including Valentine's neighbor Auguste).

Later through the grapevine she finds out that a retired judge had a suit filed against him and she rushes to his house to assure him she had no part. He already knows, because he was the one who turned himself in.

Over the next days Valentine begins to empathize more and more with Mr. Kern's existence. As a former judge he was forced to make decisions far more difficult than most. In fact why do people follow laws? Is it out of goodness or purely self-serving? Is morality all relative? What really is good and bad, because how would we act in the other man's shoes? By this point we see Kern's struggle a little better.

Finally Valentine invites her new found friend to her last fashion show before she heads to England for a few weeks. It's a touching moment when he pays her a visit after the show, but it's also reveals the pain in the old man's past. It may be a lucky guess but all we know is that Valentine figures him out. It just shows you cannot judge others by first impressions.

So as it goes Auguste's life practically mirrors that of a younger Kern and thus so many parallels become evident. Aside from the obvious I only figured it out after the film was done, but they are both judges, struggle in love and the like. At the end of the film when Kern sees the news about the ferry  with Valentine and Auguste aboard, the only thing we know for sure is that there were seven survivors (guess who!). In a somewhat subtle way the trilogy is connected and Kieslowski ends his tale on a fitting note. It freezes and just like that the career of one man was done for good. A couple years later he would already be gone. But he went out on top and Three Colors cemented his legacy. I always loved the color red the best. Here's yet another reason why.

4.5/5 Stars