The Double Life of Veronique

A few spoilery bits throughout! Just like a constellation you're unable to decipher yet sure its stars are linked together to form a certain pattern, the lives of Weronika and Véronique are inextricably, and inexplicably, linked by an invisible thread only intuitively felt. The former lives in Poland while the latter in France, they were born on the same day, share a knack for music (Weronika is a choir singer with an ethereal, angelic voice; Véronique is a music teacher), and suffer from a cardiological problem. They're, in a mythological sense of the word, doppelgängers, who'd better live in two parallel worlds lest bumping into each other would result in putting one another's lives into a tailspin. In one sense, the film is about that person in your dreams who you think, besides looking exactly like you, complements you in ways beyond your capacity even if you're sharing the same affinities as well. A splitting image you'd easily mistake for your other half even though you're pretty much a whole. Someone you long to meet to be fulfilled, and when awake, you grieve for the implausibility of it all. And I think it's within this realm where the movie operates on a subconscious level so that you're effortlessly connected emotionally with it by merely letting yourself immersed in its sepia-drenched images and its downpour to wash over you. However, I wouldn't buy that description at all. In another sense, it's a film about discovering one's own identity. Insofar this seems a proper description that I can't refute, I still think this is just scratching the surface; focusing on obvious details and disregarding the overarching theme. For me, The Double Life of Véronique is about grieving for your younger, juvenile self despite the naivety that led to its demise; about a deep-seated longing for the past that grows on while growing old even though you're more mature and successful now than you were way back when. And this is exactly where the film manages to hit some nostalgic notes, for the film seems to celebrate that desperate longing in one way or another. Besides the puppets show I'll mention later, there's a scene that sums up all this in a few words: Véronique's father shows her a fragrance to try it, she tells him it's nice but the one he showed her the other day was more pleasant. "This is from the end of Autumn, the other was from the beginning," is her father's reply, which he follows by wondering whether people would need this fragrance at all. The movie is chockablock with subtle visual and narrative details carry multi-layered symbolic significance that I couldn't get my head around in my first watch. The Double Life of Véronique is an enigmatic metaphysical tale with an expressionistic set design and cinematography littered with subtleties functioning as an objective correlative, stressing every emotional beat along the way. There's a lot of reflections in The Double Life of Véronique and the look-alike characters see themselves, or rather sense each other, in many things: images; objects. Throughout the first half, we see recurring distortions, upside-down images and mirror-like reflections, some show convexity and others concavity. We see plenty of objects such as a tram window glass, a man's magnifying spectacles, and a starry marble. They're all suggestive of something wrong rippling Weronika's life and irking her of late while bringing her fears of not being "alone in this world" to the fore. Besides, there are many juxtapository images the editing mix in that accentuate the dual nature at the core of the film. Indeed It's a film where objects and images hold immense value to the characters but also work as clues of revealing significance, and expository tools to the viewer as well. It's not until the marionette show where I started to fathom the film through the "metamorphosis by death" metaphor. The shroud is a cocoon? No wonder why there's a shot from the point of view of a corpse! Through this scene, Kieślowski makes a parallel to Véronique's double life, indicating that with the death of Weronika, Véronique began a fully-fledged new life. Moreover, by letting the camera linger on Jacob’s face, Kieślowski captures the intensity of her internal conflict, and by ending the dizzying fits of Weronika with an off-kilter, tilted angle, we collapse with her. Thus, the camera is both a guiding force and a participant in Weronika's crumpling life and Veronique's quest of love and working out her existential issues. The Double Life of Véronique is just a flawless harmony or a poetic mood piece, buoyed by Idziak's ravishing cinematography, Preisner's haunting score, and sees Irène Jacob — in one of the most riveting performances I've ever seen to date — emoting endless feelings across the film's fleeting runtime, taking you on a rollercoaster of emotions from start to finish.

Identical women, born on the same day to different corners of Europe, subconsciously influence each other’s lives. Though they never meet - only a brief sighting from across a crowded town square - their shared extra-sensory connection is deep and profound. Doubly so when one suddenly collapses and dies during a choral performance. Across the miles, a drastic mood swing shows us that the other is immediately aware of her loss. After experiencing that moment of heavy, inexplicable grief, she develops a newfound appreciation for life’s little delights and a fresh attraction to love. Though its plot may be limited and often confusing, there’s something intrinsically seductive and alluring at play here. The film’s technical warmth and rich visual tones deserve recognition, but I think its star is the reason everything comes together. Irène Jacob plays both characters, on-screen for nearly the entire running time, and displays a rare degree of cinematic magnetism. A quiet and understated actress, she single-handedly carries the story’s weight, conveying complicated emotions with subtlety and nuance. And it doesn’t hurt that she’s a certifiable knockout, effortlessly gorgeous in even the most mundane of acts. A critically imperfect, but emotionally entrancing, mix of sights and senses.