La Double Vie de Véronique

The very definition of the word “delicacy”.

La Double Vie de Veronique, the first Kieslowski movie I watched, just stunned me. The sepia tones, the gorgeous singing and lead performance, and the understated mystery let me know that this was the work of a master. For the longest time it wasn’t available on region 1, so when I finally got a Philips all region PAL/NTSC player I just knew I was going to plunk down some change to import this picture. It is still my favorite KK film, and I just love to see the joy in Irene Jacobs face when she’s singing in the rain. And the soundtrack by Z. Preisner is exquisite. Eastern European film making at its finest.

It was my first Kieslowski as well. Beautiful movie. So beautiful that I don’t really pay much attention to the story…but I don’t think the story is anything to write home about anyway. But, beautiful beautiful picture

Red was my first, but Veronique is the one that makes me mad for Kieslowski and wish like hell he was still with us.

Wow, I just finished watching this film, which I bought completely on a whim, without knowing anything about it nor it’s director (thus proving, that even when you constantly work to expand your knowledge on a subject such as film, you never know what genius you might be missing), and I completely fell in love with it, and now have an uncontrollable urge to try and find all that I can of this directors work. I am truly at a loss for words; the beauty of this film is overwhelming. The beautiful cinematography, the brilliant compositions and art direction (especially the brilliant color schemes), and most importantly the subtle nuances of the narrative and character development, all coalesce into quite possibly one of the most interesting, intriguing and beautiful films that I have ever had the pleasure to view.

Like coming across a small Buddhist temple in a clearing. What a lovely post. And how valid.

I want to echo Prudence. Sławomir Idziak’s cinematography and Zbigniew Preisner’s score are so intrinsic in the film’s overall effect that it makes you want to pull them up onto the “auteur” podium with Kieslowski so that they can all link arms.

Doug Cummins writes that, “Double Life is, in many ways, a passionate celebration of intuitive thinking in and of itself and the interconnectivity of emotions generated by music, performance, and beautiful cinematography. A glittering tone poem with a careful arrangement of narrative patterns and details that remain remote, it’s certainly Kieslowski’s most abstracted and poetic film. Whether or not it offers any deeper meaning beyond its own amber-hued surfaces probably depends more on one’s interior predilections and aesthetic convictions than any explicit content on Kieslowski’s part.”

The statement, insightful in several respects, also seems self-contradictory in its conclusion. Poems are sometimes like atoms. Small but astonishingly powerful, the greatest of them continue to elicit emotional and semantic responses long after the initial experience. That must have at least as much to do with the poem’s capacity as the individual recipient’s.

Kieslowski’s films are to me often like that. Benign radioactivity.

I recently saw this, and similar to all my other Kieslowski experiences was amazed. The film is so simple but yet so complex at the same time. I just sat there staring at my TV in awe of the beauty of the film.

I felt the same way Drew. I don’t think I could see this film enough – every time I watch it I feel the same amazement. Does anyone have an interesting interpretation of this film?

For me this film is Kieslowski’s most difficult—I have yet to figure out the ending after seeing it many times, but I still find this film one of most sublime, profound films of a major auteur—I love this film, but it is only great film that I don’t really understand in any real concrete terms—any body want to help me out here!

It’s my favourite by Kieslowski. Sorry i’ve nothing very original to say. I love its tenderness and mystery. It has similarities with Blind Chance (fate and different possible outcomes), Dekalog 9 (which also had fictional composer Van den Budenmayer, was linked with Dekalog 6, involving spying), and Three Colours (the different heroines finally unwittingly interlinked).

It deals with alternative lives, parallel universes, mirror images, reflective surfaces, fate/ free will/ manipulation/ puppeteer control, seen by some as political and wider national allegory, Poland suffered and sacrificed in WW2 then eaten up in Soviet bloc (i’m less convinced), blue rarely used and then linked to loved one, amber and golden filter and reds for emotional warmth (Jacob is again red in 3 Colours), it’s elemental, water, rain, roots (more than one meaning), trees, leaves…

Kieslowski originally wanted Andie MacDowall for the part- but isn’t Jacob wonderful?

When i see it again (it’s been many years now) i’ll hopefully come up with something more interesting

For FLEMMON and BOBBY DUBOIS:
Start with the title. The Double Life of Veronique/ Weronika for us is Veronica – in the vernacular “vera icon”/ true icon, from the apocryphal NT woman who is said to have wiped the face of Christ in his passion, leaving an image in his blood on the fabric of her scarf. I came across her searching for “veronica” – true icon: the saint and the pass the matador makes with the cape of the same name. Twisting his body without moving his feet, he draws the bull in close around him. The moment of truth follows.

Thanks for that piece of etymology, Michael, very interesting. More posts like that at the Auteurs!

Not that it has any bearing on the relevance of your post, but according to Wiki “vera eikon” is folk etymology that dates back to medieval times, whereas the true root of Veronica is Latin (“bearer of victory”). Could you elaborate on the matador’s cape? They use a cape named after the scarf of St. Veronica?

Of the five Kieslowski I’ve seen, in my opinion they improve in the order they were made: A Short Film about Love, Double Life of Veronique, Blue, White, Red. Double Life is lovely, but it shades towards gimmickry (for lack of a better word).

This is an absolutely amazing film. The film itself permits many interpretations but I believe allows any conclusions to arise from an individuals own life perspective. It asks many questions about human behavior and predestination but resolutely refuses to provide any answers. Any answers I thought I gleamed from the film seem to change on a different viewing depending on my mindset or emotional state. Has any one ever viewed this as a sort of sequel or extension of Bergmans’ Persona? Kieslowski was pure genius and his body of work is proof.

You’re welcome petrocehalon. The Macedonian Berenice is from the Greek (phere eikon) out of which the Latin flows, but you knew that.
It is not necessary to trace the linkage of the name to Kieslowski’s title any further than mid 20th Century Spain “They (the pass) are called veronicas after St. Veronica who wiped the face of Our Lord with a cloth and are so called because the saint is always represented holding the cloth by the two corners in the position the bullfighter holds the cape for the start of the veronica” (Death in the Afternoon,67)
See also mundo-taurino.org " veronica – the fundamental two-handed cape pass named after St.Veronica "
If the screen is the cape/cloth held at apposite corners by the two veronicas, is Kieslowski the matador: the viewer the bull? The scene with the red bus in the square within which Veronique takes the photograph of Weronika is at once the point of transference of the image/photograph as well as the movement of the bull around the unmoving figure of the unseen cine-camera around which its mechanism revolves. This moment holds an echo of an older myth of a woman enclosed within a technical apparatus to stimulate the interest of a bull – Pasiphae, wrapped within the artifice of Daedalus.
This is a master drawing deeply from the well at the centre of European consciousness.
The film bears repeated viewing. It is, for me, the work of a master at one with his medium.

Fascinating. Now that you mention it, in the two images of St. Veronica on the Wikipedia page, she does hold the scarf like a bullfighter’s cape. And again, now that you mention it, the camerawork in that bus sequence are indeed reminiscent of a pass in a bull fight. Cool.

I just saw this film two days ago. I noticed the interplay of red and green, whatever those colores mean. I don’t know. This movie is a puzzle. I didn’t care so much for the photography, I think it was overdone.
At one point I said to myself “fuck this movie, I want the soundtrack”
I reminded me of Being John Malcovich.
The movie is there, but I don’t know what to make of it.
Where was the filmmaker coming from? What is it about beside the obvious? Does it even have a meaning or is it just cool moments and images? Would anybody care to enlighten me?

…or could one of them be a clone?

Berjuan, the “meaning” of Veronique is found in its title. It’s the idea that sometimes you get a do-over. You notice the differences between the two women, and the different paths they choose. Basically, I say read the essay that came with the film, because it’s truly very enlightening. It is a great movie.

And they’re not clones. haha.

Savvy

… I don’t own the film, but I’ll look for the essay… maybe I’ll do a movie like Veronique with clones.

P.S.
Is cloning not a do-over in a sense?

Berjuan, yeah, it is, but I think it’s not only pretty obvious that they’re not clones, but also, looking at Kieslowski’s work, it didn’t seem like the kind of thing he’d do. He’s interesting in the metaphysical, not the scientific. He’s interested much more in chance than advancements in technology. I mean, if it is cloning, I’d be surprised.

Savvy

What about metaphysical cloning…?

PS
Dang… I feel like I should be posting in the “destined for greatness thread”

This is what I got from the film:
Krzysztof Kieslowski said that all of his films are about expressing inner emotions – I wished he had said an “inner life”.
It is the inner life that Veronique is unable or unwilling to project to the world as did her double, Weronika. Veronique will not step over the threshold of uncertainty and come fully into existence.
A title considered by Kieslowski for the film was “Unfinished Girl”.
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Miramax made him add four scenes for American distribution and I think they were correct to do that.
What if he had shot Weronika in color and Veronique in B& W?

Read ZIzek’s essay that comes with the film. I think he’s got it.

ZIzek:

That’s another version of my POV ( to be fully realized is to be free) and not what I am asking – could the film have been more effective for a viewer? ( without Zizek?)

Btw, Flemmon if you got what Zizek said watching the film – quit your day job !

Also note Zizek’s reference to the American ending – the inclusion of the 4 extra scenes wasn’t because American audiences are dumb; it was because Kieslowski’s ending was too obscure:
her touching the tree – something fully realized, solid & unconscious.

i love the previous comment.

Kieslowski:

“Of course I thought about the audience all the time while making Véronique so that I even made a different ending for the Americans, because I thought you have to meet them halfway, even if it means renouncing your own point of view.”

In my opinion Keislowski’s finest film without including The Decalogue which is like a whole different world

He really added extra scenes for the American release?

…Is the criterion release the original or the ‘Americans hate subtlety’ version?

I read that they were originally going to have many different versions depending on which theater you saw it at,