(1994; French) Not revulsion but pity against indifference. A young man attempts to make a long-distance telephone call, getting a busy signal. In Paris, Valentine Dussaut (Irène Jacob), a fashion model, receives a phone call from her boyfriend Michel traveling in Poland, saying his car has been stolen with passport, money, clothes. The same man (who sometimes wears a red shirt with red tie) gets into his red Jeep. Valentine chooses from numerous photos the one that will become her image on an enormous billboard of crimson advertising chewing gum. Intermittent scenes of the young man in the Jeep, sometimes with an attractive blonde woman, other times with his black dog in his apartment of red decor, are interwoven throughout.

At night after her ballet class during the day, (red brake light) she hits a German shepherd with her car; with Rita (from the dog tag) in the backseat, she drives to the address where (no answer) she boldly enters the house through the open door to find an old man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) listening to voices from a sophisticated surveillance system. Seemingly indifferent about what to do with the dog, he tells her: "Go away!" At the vet Valentine learns that Rita, who needs some stitches, is pregnant.

With one pull on a slot machine in Café Cher Joseph (scarlet signage and same name as the judge) Valentine scores with three cherries (the same image on a carton in her apartment); bad luck she's told. Her 16-year-old brother Marc's photo appearing on the front page of a newspaper is bad news.

Letting Rita loose from her leash, Valentine watches the dog race off, escaping through a church; she later finds Rita back at the old man's house where she has come to give back most of the money he mailed her for the vet bill. "You don't want her?" asks Valentine of Rita. "I want nothing," replies the wizened man with a cane. "Then stop breathing."

Director Krzysztof Kieslowski co-wrote the screenplay for this mystery of chance, coincidences, and connections - the last of his trilogy of colors, his final film, within which he explores real versus unreal relationships. Choral music from composer Van den Budenmayer echoes Blue's soundtrack. A central theme concerns a desire for the purity and peace of true love as opposed to having equality and freedom.

The old man is a retired judge who illegally eavesdrops on his neighbors' mobile-phone conversations. "Disgusting!" exclaims Valentine at first. He challenges her then to do something about it. She goes over to one of the neighbors, a man with a wife and daughter (who also listens in on her father's conversation from another phone downstairs) but returns, having said nothing. As a judge, he explains: "I've done it all my life." Valentine counters: "Everyone deserves a private life." He asks her why she didn't expose his spying: Perhaps she considered the possible consequences to the wife and daughter if the man's business were to come to light? Before she departs, she expresses pity for the judge, requesting he cease the prying into others' lives.

In all three movies, an elderly woman attempts to place a bottle in the recycling bin; only Valentine helps her. "So who do you do it for?" asks the judge. Are good deeds ever done without some expectation of personal gain by the do-gooder? Are most people of bad character or just weak?

Gradually the doubling of the judge's past, which he reveals to Valentine like a prophetic repetition, with the current life of Auguste Bruner (Jean-Pierre Lorit), a young judge with the red Jeep and blonde girlfriend, becomes apparent. Celebrating Rita's litter of seven pups and the judge's birthday, Valentine expresses reticence of leaving her mother and brother for England soon to be with Michel; the judge responds by saying it's her destiny and recommends taking a ferry across the channel.

He tells her about a sailor he wrongly acquitted of a crime, resulting in his decision to retire early from the bench; judging people, he says, shows a lack of modesty. Justice is not concerned with those who are innocent.

"Is there someone you love?" she asks. "No," he answers, though he dreamed of her when she was fifty. When she asks Michel over the phone if he loves her, he can only say: "I think I do."

Guessing that the judge has been betrayed by a woman he loved, Valentine invites the judge to her fashion show (auditorium with red seats); she gives the judge a new breath of life.

The conclusion brings together characters from all three films.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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