Review of The Double Life of Véronique (1991) by Kenneth L — 03 Mar 2012

This is the first movie I've seen from the very famous and respected Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski, and I don't really know what to say about it. This movie doesn't make any sense, but it's also clearly not trying to. It's very beautiful and assured, and also so artsy it almost hurts at times.

The title is a little misleading - Veronique doesn't actually have a double life the way, say, Batman does. There are actually two of her - a Polish singer named Weronika, and a French music teacher named Veronique (both are played by Irene Jacob and look exactly the same). They don't know each other, though they do almost cross paths early on in the movie. We see some of Weronika's life, and then we abruptly shift to Veronique's life.

Irene Jacob, who won the Cannes best actress award for this movie in 1991, has to carry what drama the movie has as Weronika/Veronique. It reminded me of an Ingmar Bergman movie, because we spend so much time just watching various emotions play across her face. The psychology of both characters is pretty much impenetrable. Jacob does a great job, but the movie keeps her at a distance from the audience that we don't normally expect.

Visually and aurally, this is quite a movie. It's also almost preposterously artsy. There's a marionette show like the ones in Being John Malkovich, except this movie isn't making fun of it. The cinematography by Slawomir Idziak is some of the best, or at least the most inflected, I've ever seen; practically everything is bathed in this lush, moody green light, or in red or yellow sometimes. That this movie was made before digital color correction is amazing; the Criterion Collection DVD I saw it on does a great job preserving the look of the movie. There's a ton of opera music. The direction and editing do a great job evoking the main characters' subjectivity, even though we never seem to actually get into her head. I have no idea what this movie means, or if it really even means anything, but whatever it is it's doing, it certainly does it well.