La Double Vie de Véronique (1991)

(The Double Life of Veronique)

directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski
Frames in this review are taken from the Criterion Collection DVD.

To reduce confusion, or at least to remain consistent, I will use:

Weronika to refer to the Polish girl
Véronique to refer to the French girl
Veronique (no accent) as shorthand for the film as a whole.

In the relationship between France and Poland, Krzysztof Kieslowski is to film what Frédéric Chopin was to music, and Marie Curie to chemistry. Since the extinction of Poland as a political entity in the eighteenth century, France as one of the leading nation-states of Europe has been a nexus for Polish exiles of all talents. Kieslowski would pay tribute to two centuries of friendship in his Three Colors trilogy: Blue, White, and Red, from the French tricolor flag and depicting the ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood which form the Republic's motto. Yet despite their grand conception, the films in the trilogy remain intimate and individual, each focusing on the connection made between two people.

So too is The Double Life of Veronique, but in a more metaphysical way. Here, it's not two people with a strong bond, as in the Three Colors trilogy; or even two near-twins, one male and one female, as in the posthumously-filmed first act of his Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory trilogy. If Kieslowski cynics snipe about "duality," then Veronique has a bulls-eye painted on it. The two girls are not merely soul mates, they're two versions of the same person (played by Irène Jacob) in different circumstances.

The Polish Weronika auditions for a singing position with an orchestra. Despite her lack of formal training, her performance at the audition is so brilliant that she gets the job. But she has a heart condition, and pouring out her soul as she does in her energetic singing, dies during her first concert performance. Hundreds of miles away, the French music teacher Véronique is in the middle of making love, presumably experiencing la petite mort of orgasm. Afterwards, she feels profoundly alone, and the next day, she quits her singing lessons. She has her students play the same concerto that Weronika was singing as she died, a long-lost piece by the (fictional) Dutch composer Van den Budenmeyer. Véronique had once taken a photo of Weronika as her tour bus was speeding away from a riot in Warsaw, but Véronique is unaware of Weronika until the photos are developed (in typical Kieslowski fashion, they're black-and-white on a contact sheet; compare to Irène Jacob's fashion shoot in Three Colors: Red). After seeing a puppet show, she receives a mysterious tape in the mail, deciphers the sounds as belonging to a café at the train station, and finds the puppeteer. Later, the puppeteer shows her a doll of her likeness, and reflects on a play that he's writing about two identical girls in the world.

There are many parallels in the film, of course, from the little glass ball that both Veronicas have, to the kind and loving fathers who tell their disquieted daughters that of course they aren't alone, to the headphones they wear while listening to tapes to shut out the world. But the connections function on a more spiritual level, as do the differences. Weronika is eager and vivacious — on the phone to her friend in Krakow, as Communism is collapsing around Eastern Europe, she playfully whistles the Internationale. Véronique, on the other hand, is drifting a bit — one of her friends is in the middle of a messy divorce and is looking for ammunition; she volunteers to perjure herself and state on the stand that she'd slept with him. When she finds the puppeteer, who'd been in the café for over a day waiting for her, she's disappointed that her quest amounts only to this, strides away, and hides from her admirer.

Kieslowski is a consummate auteur, and explores similar themes in many of his films. Identity, of course; the transformative power of music; and moral rules and guidelines in the context of the human condition. What is the significance of the divorce case, or of the old woman in the street? In a Kieslowski film they are not necessarily significant by themselves, because it's the impact of these ideas and images, taken just as they are, that make the film. It's not like one of those overly-clever flashback-laden or out-of-sequence American whodunits that so delight the college crowd, where every piece has to fit into a jigsaw to produce a tableau at the end. Here, there are odds and ends; indeed, every viewer may fit together his own connections (and accuse others of overanalyzing the rest).

Still, Veronique is much harder to grasp than the more plot-heavy Three Colors trilogy or Heaven, all of which are more conrete and plausible yet no less spiritual than Veronique. Certainly not helping is the dependence on precise images to make a point — little nuances of facial expressions, the warm and moody lighting. Kieslowski is very careful about composition and editing; a very enlightening featurette on one of the Three Colors DVDs has him explaining how carefully a short shot of a sugar cube dissolving in coffee was planned.