Trois Couleurs: Rouge (Red)
Destiny and circumstance. Do these two concepts relate to each other? Of course they do, or at least that's what Red, the "Three Colors" final film, believes. A film like Red doesn't come along too often, and when it does it deserves a bigger audience and a lot more awards than it got. Red follows Blue, which starred Juliette Binoche (Oscar winner from The English Patient and one of my favorite actresses), and White. These three films together make an incredible viewing experience (or so I have heard), and they are probably more thought provoking and mature than most American films.
Watching Red, I was overwhelmed by the slowness of the film. Thankfully, this slow pace makes the film much more interesting than it would have been if it were made in America. The visuals are all well done which make it fun to watch, and the story is extremely fun for the mind to watch and figure out. The story can be taken many different ways, but from my understanding of this film, the film is about people and the things that happen during the day. This is the major difference between American films and foreign films. America wants big-budget action film where we are introduced to a hero who goes through specific events of the day, ending up chasing and usually killing the bad guy. Red is much more interesting than that as it tells the story of a model, Valentine (Irene Jacob), and the events of a few days of her life.
In fact, there really is no specific plot and this creates an intriguing idea that makes us want to watch to find out what happens to her. We don't know what could happen next because it almost seems like the plot is non-existent. The plot unfolds very gradually, exposing the model and her life. She begins the day by going to a small cafe and getting a newspaper. She then plays one pull of a slot machine. From here, whatever happens to her can have a profound effect on the outcome of the day. This is the same as everyone's life: whatever we do affects what happens the next day, or the next. One of the several meanings of Red is that we see and meet people everyday, and we don't stop to realize that we may have met these same people before, in some other place.
Red centers around one central figure, but it also brings into the plot the lives of several other people. These other people all have their own emotions and business, but they all never stop to realize that they have seen each other many times. The main two characters are Valentine and a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant). Valentine happens upon the judge when she accidentally hits his German shepherd. When she meets the judge, she begins to form a friendship with him, even though he is breaking the law by spying on other people's telephone conversations. This is a good example of destiny because if the dog was somewhere else, or if didn't have a collar, Valentine would never have met the judge, and her life would be completely different from how it turns out in the film.
The two other main characters in the film are Karin (Frédérique Feder) and Auguste (Jean-Pierre Lorit), a personal weather consultant and a new judge, respectively. These two people are a key to the film because they reflect a story told by the retired judge. This story told by the judge is filled with irony and foreshadowing, and we can see the final moments of the film in our head, but they turn out completely different from what we expect (not that you could guess what would happen). There is no way to explain it, and there is no way I would want to explain it because the joy of watching is not knowing what will happen next.
While the story is extremely fascinating to watch, it's the visual technique and camera angles that make Red one of the best films of 1994. Cinematographer Piotr Sobocinski managed to do something that made me want to watch the film even more than the story. He was able to capture "red" on screen almost in every scene of the film. The cafe she walks into at the beginning of the film has a huge red sign outside, and the fashion show auditorium is completely red. His cinematography was good enough to get an Oscar nomination (and in my opinion, it should have won). Red means fraternity on the French flag and it is incredible to see how director Krzysztof Kieslowski was able to create a film based on this theme, and it is also incredible how well it turned out. One of the best scenes in the film is the very last one where the characters from all the "Three Colors" films meet on a boat. A photograph is taken of Jacob and it happens to be exactly the same as an ad campaign Jacob did.
The cast of the film is one of the best elements of the film. Irene Jacob is extremely powerful as Valentine. She reminds me of Juliette Binoche because in the same way as Binoche, Jacob can express all sorts of emotion with just her face. We can almost tell exactly what she is thinking throughout the film. Jean-Louis Trintignant gives a powerful, multi-layered performance as the judge, and we never really find out what his background is until late in the film. Feder and Lorit are both extremely good as the supporting characters.
Red is rated R for a brief, but strong sex scene. There is so much to tell about Red that I can't in this review. My advice is just go rent it. You'll be thoroughly surprised. This is one of the first foreign films that I have ever seen, but judging from this one, it won't be my last. I can't wait to see the previous two films in the trilogy.