(1993; Polish and French) "We all know pain." Some more than others. That's the purpose of revenge: to translate one's pain to the language another can understand.

In a French courtroom, during which Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) needs the assistance of a translator to understand the proceedings, since he speaks Polish, his French wife of six months, Dominique (Julie Delpy), requests and is granted a divorce on the grounds that the marriage hasn't been consummated. Though they made love before their wedding, he failed afterward. She answers the question whether she still loves him in the negative.

An accomplished hairdresser - they met in Budapest during a competition he won - he's been left broke in Paris with only his trunk.

(In her salon she found him sleeping; when she attempted to take away the keys, he swallowed them. Once again they attempted copulation unsuccessfully; she set the drapes on fire, calling the police to blame him for revenge against her.)

He won't understand, she says, if she says she loves or hates him, but though he can't comprehend, she tells him she wants him.

In a subway busking by playing a Polish tune with his comb to his lips, Karol is befriended by a fellow Pole, Mikolaj (Janusz Gajos), who offers to take Karol (lacking passport) back to Poland if he will perform a favor: kill a married man with children who no longer wants to live.

After cutting Mikolaj's hair, from a subway exit Karol shows his companion Dominique's window, where the silhouette indicates someone else as well. When he telephones her, she lets him listen as she unmercifully moans into the receiver.

Karol curls up inside his trunk with a female bust, where he endures the four-hour flight to Poland. In Poland the 165-lb suitcase goes missing at the airport, swiped by four thieves not expecting to find a man inside; they leave Karol - "Home at last" - beaten in the snow.

Director Krzysztof Kieslowski co-wrote the screenplay for this comic mystery of avengement, the second of his trilogy of colors. White, as virginal as a wedding dress; as blinding as an orgasmic climax.

Hauling his suitcase containing the broken bust, Karol tramps to his hair salon (now with a flashing neon sign) where his partner and numerous female clients are happy for his return. Unable to make money quickly enough cutting and styling women's hair, he gets a job as a guard for a money-laundering operation, where he overhears plans for a lucrative land investment.

After Mikolaj makes their re-acquaintance, they travel to Warsaw where Karol shoots the man who wants to die in the chest - with a blank. The next round being live ammunition, Karol asks: "Are you sure?"

When the two guys come for Karol after they've discovered he's purchased the land ahead of them, he explains while being mistreated that he has an "airtight" contract: "If I die, everything goes to the church." Using the money from the deal with the thugs along with what Mikolaj gave him, Karol opens up a new import-export business with Mikolaj as his partner.

A year later when they're wealthy, Karol calls Dominique, who hangs up on him. He changes his last will and testament, making her the beneficiary of his entire estate. Needing a corpse to go along with the newspaper obituaries, his driver obtains a dead Russian's body with crushed face: "You can buy anything."

Karol watches through binoculars from a distance to observe Dominique's reaction at his funeral. He has a ticket for Hong Kong, but first his ghost takes possession of his prize by surprise.

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

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