perica-43151 The most underappreciated film of the Krzysztof Kieslowski's famous trilogy, White is the most direct, simplest, bitterest but also precise and very satisfying. This is one smart movie, and if you are interested in the subject of justice, equality, then it is a must see. The movie has aged well and is perhaps the best one to start with if you want to watch his movies.

Red-125 The French film Trois couleurs: Blanc was shown in the U.S. with the title Three Colors: White (1994). It was written and directed by Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski.The movie begins in Paris, but soon after that the location switches to Poland. The film stars Zbigniew Zamachowski as Karol Karol, a hair stylist who has moved to Paris from his native Poland. Within the first five minutes, we learn that Karol has been married to Dominique (Julie Delpy), but she's divorcing him because "the marriage hasn't been consummated." Apparently, their sex life was OK before they were married, but, since the marriage, Karol has become impotent.The divorce is granted, and that's pretty much the last we see of Julie Delpy until the end of the movie. I was surprised by this, because Juliette Binoche was in almost every scene of Three Colors: Blue. However, in this film, the female lead actually has a supporting role, and a small one at that. Of course, Delpy is very beautiful, and we know from other films that she can act. But she can't do much acting if she's not on the screen. (Incidentally, in regard to Delpy's beauty, the two young men sitting next to us proclaimed that she was "scorching." I've never heard that term used to describe an actor's beauty, but I understood what they meant.)Karol ends up back in Poland, having faced numerous hardships, some of which are hard to believe. But, he had to get back to Poland somehow, and he did.The rest of the movie shows Karol using his wits to move from being a hairdresser in a very small salon to becoming a wealthy man with a chauffeur-driven Volvo.People keep telling him, "You can buy anything in Poland now." I assume this is Director Kieslowski's way of reminding us that in 1994, the Polish Republic was only five years old. There was a frenzied capitalist explosion after the Russian troops left. Karol thrives in that milieu.The movie takes some more strange twists, and ends in a strange way. (If you're interested, you can make sense of the last few moments of the film by checking the FAQ for this movie.)I believe that Three Colors: Blue is a great movie. I think Three Colors: White is a pretty good movie, but not worth a special trip to see it. It will work well on DVD.We saw this film at the excellent Dryden Theatre at George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. It was shown as part of the "Three Colors: Remembering Krzysztof Kieslowski" series. The movie has a high 7.7 IMDb rating, so, clearly, many people liked it more than I did. Maybe they appreciated the relationship between Karol and Dominique as symbolizing the relationship between Poland and France. Possibly I missed other symbolismIf you see Three Colors: Blue and Three Colors: Red, you'll want to see Three Colors: White for the sake of completeness. Just don't expect it to be a masterpiece.

Hitchcoc I did not know of these films. I'm late to the party. Also, I've viewed them out of sequence. It doesn't matter. What an experience! This one is about true love. The poor Polish schmuck is being divorced by his beautiful young wife because he has been unable to consummate he marriage. We do wonder why that is, but it could well be a medical condition. He is not give a chance. As a matter of fact, she takes everything from him without a bit of compassion, leaving him sitting on a steamer trunk in a Paris street. He manages to meet his savior, a complex to man who seems to have many secrets. With his help, he manages to accumulate great wealth. I won't go into the details other than he never stops loving the woman, no matter what. Granted, his intentions are not the best, but they make for a delicate balance between freedom and revenge. Karol has lost his freedom through no fault of his own and we hang on to see how this manifests itself. The closing scene is full of hope and resolution. One of the most interesting characters in all of moviedom.

MisterWhiplash In the story of 'White', one of the segments as part of the "Three-Colors Trilogy" that capped off the career of Kieslowski (this was released second after 'Blue', just before 'Red'), Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) is married to Dominique (Julie Delpy), but at the start of the film they're getting a divorce. What harm exactly did he do to her? We don't quite know. All we can really gleam is that he loves her passionately but, you know how the "Golddiggers" song goes, huh fellas? This is not to say that this film is misogynistic, or rather I don't think that is really Kieslowski's game with the satire here - and make no mistake, this is as biting satire (and out-and-out comedy) as it can get for such a director. While Dominique is conniving - she leaves poor Karol with nothing but a suitcase, and despite him trying to get her back he turns up (in more ways than one) flaccid. Can he win her back some how? He's still crazy about her - he even buys a statue that looks remarkably like her to keep by his side.Through a rather crazy set of circumstances, which include meeting another Polish man in France who wants him to commit a murder for money (a lot of it) and then finding a way back to Poland by, you guessed it, stuffing himself inside of a suitcase (sure, it gets stolen and he's beaten up by the thieves, but it's the price to pay for getting back to Poland). He tries to build himself back up, and does by chance and ingenuity - and screwing over other crooks before they get the chance to steal people of their land - and all of this is really to do one thing: find a way to get Dominique back into his life. How will this be done? By some unlikely means necessary.A couple of points in White, perhaps mid-way through, seemed a little slow when the film wasn't sure quite what to do with Karol. What is he doing back in Wasaw exactly? Where will this story be going to? And, most confusingly, why does Delpy's Dominique pop up - randomly, to my point of view - two times in the middle of the film, just clips of scenes of her later on in the film? Kieslowski is much more sly in this film than he is in Blue or Red, films that dealt on more concrete terms about existential anxiety and about not connecting with people after traumas of lapses in connection (re Binoche, who randomly pops up in a bling-and-you'll miss cameo and Trintignant).I think the key to me came after seeing the film and noticing a reviewer comparing Kieslowski's approach as a critique of capitalism in the modern age. Before reading that, White was an entertaining film but, comparatively, "light" in what it has to offer. It is all still a divorcée-con-job story, with overtones in the third act of, of all things, The Third Man in its trickery of a character playing dead. But what does carry over in this film - which features its title color revealed at moments of revelation, the wedding dress Delpy wears, and an actual climactic "moment" - is the humor and commentary on a society picking itself up, as Poland was, in the days of the end of Communist rule. I wish I had put that context more for when I was watching it, and maybe on a re-watch it will be more interesting with that in mind.If it does keep from being great overall, it may be because it's a little too... short, in a way. A part of me wishes there was just a scene or two more development of Karol/Dominique's relationship, but on the other hand it's easy to see why Kieslowski keeps it to what it is: love that is more about need and desire than full-on compatibility, on both sides.It goes by in a brisk 90 minutes, and Delpy is there for all of 20 minutes, tops (her appearance on the cover is more for advertisement purposes). When she does appear in the film, her character is raw and duplicitous at first, but strangely vulnerable when it comes to her sorta comeuppance when she really returns. In this midsection, and really our hero, we have Zamachowski, and he is terrific and funny and sad and all sort of things as this hapless guy who knows he loves his wife, even (especially) when he's enacting his obsessive-revenge-type of response to her rejection of him. If there was ever an American remake - not that one should want it, but hypothetically - Paul Giamatti would fit the role perfectly. He's an average, shlubby every-man who is three dimensional: likable, unlikable, fairly slick one minute and idiotic the next.For a director who is often looked at as having very "Heavy" films, and for good reason, a film like Three Colors: White is, for lack of a better word, fun, and it's enjoyable mostly to see the director work in such a mood - though the ending turns out to be rather tragic in what it suggests will come for these characters' double crossings.