Trois couleurs (Bleu / Blanc / Rouge)

I decided to borrow all three parts of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours trilogy from my local library after seeing The Double Life of Veronique recently. I sat down to watch part one, not really expecting much.

I was wrong.

The stories pulled me in and I ended up watching the entire trilogy and then buying it in Amazon's Boxing Week sale.

Blue 4.5/5
Starring Juliette Binoche

What is it about French women and huge dark eyes? This opening story starts like a Hitchcock movie with a shot of a leaky brake cable underneath a car. Sure enough it crashes, killing Julie's composer husband and her little girl.

Julie deals with life in the only way she knows how, desperate to feel something. Her journey is very interesting and I was drawn in almost immediately. I cared what happened to her.

White 4/5
Starring Zbigniew Zamachowski

This also starts off in Paris and we see a Polish man appearing in court. His wife wants a divorce. There's a lot of humour in this tale as he travels back to Poland and plots how to get even with his wife. Some of the events are bizarre, others funny, a few sad. The time races by.

Red 5/5
Starring Irène Jacob

This is the best of a very strong trilogy and is set in Geneva. It plays as a mystery and stars the incredibly beautiful and talented Irène Jacob (The Double Life of Veronique). She runs over a dog and it fully recovers. She meets the owner and a series of strange events occur. There's a lot of emotion as she is initially disgusted before developing an understanding with the owner. There are many deep themes running through this one and the closing scenes tie the whole trilogy together brilliantly.

If Criterion gets hold of this trilogy to complement February's release of The Double Life of Veronique, I'll snap it up in an instant.

This is a great trilogy for Criterion fans, as well as those who liked The Double Life of Veronique and Irène Jacob's performance in that. I've been thinking about it for days.

Around here, red, white and blue are known as the colours of the American flag, and they are also the colours of the French flag. But they also are the names of the late Krzysztof Kieslowski's brilliant "Three Colours" trilogy, which has a delicacy that most directors can only dream of. Beautiful, painful, artfully shot, it's a visual feast for anyone who has an appreciation for beauty, subtlety and filmmaking.

In "Bleu," Julie de Courcy (Juliette Binoche) and her family are in a car accident when their brakes fail, and her husband and daughter are killed. Devastated, she leaves her palatial house in the country after a night with her husband's old friend Olivier (Benoît Régent), who has been in love with her for years. And though Julie tries to leave her old life behind, she is pulled in when Olivier starts to finish her husband's last composition -- and he tells her of a side of her husband that she never knew.

In the bitterly funny "Blanc," hairdresser Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) is being coldly divorced by his beautiful wife Dominique (Julie Delpy) because she is sexually dissatisfied with him -- and she takes all his money too. But after returning to Poland, Karol rebuilds his life and fortune, and amid a web of killing, seduction and faked death, he comes up with a way to get back at Dominique...

And "Rouge" is the color of love. On her way home from a modelling session, Valentine (Irene Jacob) accidently injures a pregnant dog. The owner is Joseph Kern, (Jean-Louis Trintignant) an embittered ex-judge whose job has left him spiritually adrift, and who now spends his time wiretapping the phones of his neighbors and predicting what will happen in their lives. The friendship between Valentine and Kern grows, even as a young man's current life mirrors what devastated Kern long ago...

The three colours of the French flag symbolize liberty, equality and fraternity -- and these are echoed in the stories of Kieslowski's films. And each of the three movies has its own "feel" -- "Blue" is cool and sensual, "White" was sharp and sexy, and "Red" has a sweetness and richness that is truly moving.

And while most directors are just boring when they do slow, arty direction, Kieslowski infused his direction with sensual beauty and endless light and colour, like a painting come to life. And he intertwined many symbolic images and lingering threads from one movie to the next, whether it's an old lady recycling bottles or a rather surprising finale for "Red" that brings all three movies' protagonists together.

And he saturated the movies with the colour of their title -- blue is sadness, depth and beauty; white is beautiful and pure, stark and blinding; red is passion and warmth. While this may not have been Kieslowski's intention, the constant presence of these colors (a bridal gown, a swimming pool, and so on) add an extra dimension to the emotions in the story, especially the first.

Juliette Binoche is an extremely good actress, and this movie uses her expressiveness as most movies don't. Zamachowski brings an element of humanity and poignancy to what could have been an idiotic character, and I never felt anything but understanding for this guy. And Irene Jacob brings a sweetness and innocence to her role as Valentine (aptly named, considering the title of the movie she stars in) that is rarely seen in modern movies.

Kieslowski was an unusual and extremely talented moviemaker, and his "Three Colors" trilogy -- "Bleu," "Blanc" and "Rouge" -- is an exceptional piece of work. We shall not see his like again.

Kieslowski - one of a kind. Got into our brains with realism, emotions, morality. Along with Polanski, one of Europe's truly innovative and thought provoting talents of our time. Polish camera expertise can't be beat.