Three Colors: White (1994)

How sad is this?

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT THREE COLORS: BLUE AND THREE COLORS: REDBesides the fact that all the characters meet up on a ferry at the end of the film, there is one other thing that adjoins them, and that is the courtroom scene. Karol here is the man who does not want to let the divorce happen. The man from Red is the judge, and Julie - the girl from blue, peaks through the door for a second, looking for her ex-husband's lover. These three characters are apparently at some point before the ferry all together.Regarding this one... I liked it a lot. The protagonist here loves his wife but he can't have sex with her since they got married. In red, the judge says it's the stupidest thing to judge people because you can't really be in their shoes. So since he makes this decision, Karol is left homeless in the streets. Mikolaj, who is the man that offers to take Karel back to Poland is a really interesting character for me. Since when talking about this trio, I like discussing the theme of being stuck, I'd say Mikolay is the most stuck of them all. Because he has everything seemingly: money, wife, kids, yet he wants to die. And what gets him out of this vicious loop is the fact that Karol purposely shoots him with a smoke gun. He realizes that someone may actually care about him. And I think it's small things like this that make this film wonderful.White also stood out for me with its comedy. How five robbers are discussing how to share the luggage where one person is lying by himself... I think comedy really fit this character and setting, just as music fit Julie and mystery fit Valentine.

The second installation in Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors trilogy is considered an anti-comedy. Continuing the theme of France's national motto (liberty, equality, fraternity), "Trois couleurs: Blanc" ("Three Colors: White" in English) looks at equality, as a divorced man returns to his native Poland and eventually decides to get even with his ex-wife.As in the first installment, Kieślowski uses the title color to tell the story. This color that is a combination of all the other colors appears in almost every scene. "White" continues the first movie's theme of trying to break away from the past, while there remains an object serving as a link to the past. "Blue" had the blue beads, while this one has the two-franc coin. In the end, one might interpret the man's ethically questionable business practices as a warning about going overboard in reforming Poland's economy after the Soviet-backed regime collapsed.I actually didn't find "White" to be quite as good as "Blue" (I have yet to see "Red"). The previous one focused on the woman's attempts to make a new life for herself, while this one makes the man look like the victim. Not that these turn it into a bad movie. The worst Krzysztof Kieślowski movie is better than the best Michael Bay movie. I recommend the movie. I'm now eager to see "Red".

Dominique (Julie Delpy) is in Paris court getting a divorce from her Polish Karol Karol despite his pleads. He loses everything and becomes penniless. Fellow Pole Mikołaj befriends him and offers him a job to kill somebody who already wants to die but isn't willing to do it. Mikolaj helps him to stowaway to Warsaw inside a suitcase. He reunites with his brother and gets a job as an unlikely bodyguard. Through various schemes and connections, he aims to take ultimate revenge.I would prefer to follow Julie Delpy in this movie. She is the more compelling actor. The moment she sets the curtains on fire is when I couldn't wait to see what else she's going to do. That chick is crazy. During the whole movie, I kept waiting for it to return to Dominique. The schemes that Mikolaj gets into are way too convoluted and disjointed. It's almost more important to make certain symbolic points than to make a compelling narrative. That's certainly Kieslowski's prerogative. I imagine if Dominique is the central character who gets to ride in the suitcase, do those schemes and come back to trick the weak-minded Karol. That would be an amazing character in a fun movie.

Karol is a real loser. It is not just that he is impotent, for which reason his wife, Dominique, divorces him. He acts like a worm. Because he keeps stalking Dominique, she finally has to drive him out of France.Back in Poland, he inexplicably changes from being a loser into an entrepreneur, and becomes quite rich. But he is still small in spirit, because he still holds a grudge against his ex-wife. He leaves everything to her in his will, fakes his death, and fakes evidence to make it look as though she murdered him, resulting in her being sent to prison. But just before the police come to arrest her, he shows up in her bed, and they have sex. It must have been pretty good sex too, because when he goes to the prison and looks at her with binoculars behind the bars, she signals that she still loves him and wishes they were still married. And then he cries.And people wonder why so many Americans hate foreign films!