Three Colors: White

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

with good intentions.. Trois Couleurs: White Kieslowski's bittersweet love track is probably the most apt description of the ups and downs that a marriage goes through retold in a metaphorical satire. And the exaggeration that is captured in here is equally practical as much as cinematic it is. With essential husky bits and unexpected thrills, this is the most balanced and bold tale walking on a thin wire that is purely provocative with a scoreboard mentality. From a penny to a palace, this tale has multiple tales resided within where the actual overall arc is projected in the backdrop of all this distraction, where Kieslowski discloses his intentions in its last frame and shows you how he has been fiddling with you subconsciously. And the best part is, you'd want him to play with your feelings in here. Driving such plethora of emotions on one seat, one perspective, similar to its predecessor, this is an ace in the hole. The narration is gripping and busier than the previous one. It has so much to tell within 90 minutes, that it has to play the rules smartly and calculatively, for the makers wouldn't want the audience to grow hectic. Hence, wisely the cinematography is sensible accordingly and the camera work is stable for the most time. Zamachowski, the protagonist, is being played at, and does play by. His evolution is tremendously breathtaking. The work and the detail went by, in its first act itself tells you that you are in a ride of your life. And fortunately, he has got a range to be funny and adorable, to be scare and sinister, and with those big eyes he is clearly expressive in his role. Delpy on the other hand doesn't get much to do, yet she holds on to her part convincingly. Trois Couleurs: White is as pale as it can be and is least diplomatic as it can be, it is a bullet fired from the gun, with good intentions.

Quién no ha querido recuperarse de una injusticia, desquitarse y mirar de cerca el resultado. El desenlace no sorprende, pero la realización, sí. Spoiler: ****/reviews/white-1994

In losing his wife, a Polish expat is also stripped of his dignity. Shamed for his impotence before a divorce court, he’s summarily evicted from his Paris home, ousted from his post at a high-end hair salon, disassociated from his bank account and deprived of his passport. While living as a vagrant in a nearby subway station, fate introduces him to an amiable businessman who takes pity and finds a way to send him back to his motherland. There, he intends to set things right: pulling himself up by his bootstraps and seeking a twisted measure of revenge against the woman he holds responsible. Roger Ebert called White an “anti-comedy,” but I don’t see much humor here. He likewise labeled its 1993 counterpart, Blue, an anti-tragedy, and while that story ultimately becomes uplifting, it does supply a boatload of tragic circumstances to underscore the point. Maybe Ebert was just stretching to find a unifying theme for the trilogy. I haven’t yet watched the third entry, Red, but while the first two chapters are similar in many ways, they’re antithetical in others. Where Blue was about growth through introspection, weathering an intense personal storm to find peace, White documents a more spiteful alternative. Here, our protagonist soaks up all manner of undeserved pain and dishonor, then uses it to fuel a burning, vindictive fire. He grows, too, but in unhealthier directions. The trauma deadens his nerves, nudging him towards greed and self-gratification at others’ expense. That many of his targets probably deserve the abuse is beside the point: he’s been willingly corrupted by his hardship. It’s a bleak and somber story, filmed in bleak and somber tones. The frigid, wintery climates of France and Poland feel stark and bare; dreary settings for the film’s unhappy, borderline-hostile, subject matter. Curious that a film named for the essence of light could produce something so dirty and dark.