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The Three Colors trilogy (French, 1993-1994)

Updated: Aug 14, 2024

The Three Colors trilogy is directed by the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski. The three colors- blue, white and red, are the colors of the French flag. Each film in the trilogy is dedicated to one of the three principles behind the motto of the French Republic- Blue maps to Liberty, White to Equality and Red to Fraternity.



Film 1- Three Colors:Blue (1993)


The plot


The film, based on the theme of liberty, begins with a devastating tragedy. Julie de Courcy (played by Juliette Binoche) is on a road trip with her husband Patrice de Courcy and daughter Ana, when their car meets with an accident. Patrice and Ana die but Julie survives. After abandoning a suicide attempt, Julie puts up her family's beautiful mansion for sale, gives away most of her money, isolates herself from her friends and rents a grotty rat infested apartment in Paris. She reasons that everything is impermanent and attachment to the transient will only bring more grief.




Three subplots emerge in the film, two of which center around Julie's late husband, Patrice de Courcy, a famous composer.


The first subplot involves Patrice's collaborator, Olivier Benôit (played by Benoît Régent), who has been in love with Julie. At the time of his death, Patrice had left an unfinished symphony intended to celebrate European unity at the end of the Cold War. After the accident, Julie destroys the papers containing Patrice's iterations of the composition, but the music, which plays throughout the film, continues to haunt her. She later discovers in a television interview with Olivier that he had saved a copy of the composition. Olivier convinces Julie to help him finish the symphony.


The second subplot also stems from the television interview with Olivier, in which he shares old photos of Patrice. Julie notices a woman in the photos and suspects she was Patrice's mistress. Olivier confirms her suspicions, revealing that the woman is a lawyer named Sandrine (played by Florence Pernel). Julie tracks down Sandrine and learns that her relationship with Patrice was not just a fling; they had been in love for several years. Furthermore, Sandrine is carrying Patrice's child.


While the first two subplots relate to Julie's past, the third subplot revolves around an exotic dancer named Lucille (played by Charlotte Véry), who is Julie's neighbor in the apartment building. The residents of the building want to evict Lucille on the grounds that she is a prostitute. Lucille is grateful to Julie for not signing the eviction petition, which loses its coercive power without unanimity. Despite Julie's determination to isolate herself from others, the two women form a friendship.



Observations


Liberty


In this film, liberty possibly alludes to Julie's attempt to free herself from further suffering. Though she abandons her suicide attempt, she embarks on living the next chapter of her life as a robotic, emotionless being. The logic is that suffering arises from loss, and thus by not becoming attached to things or people, one can avoid suffering. The act of crying itself signifies an attachment to a shattered dream. In a poignant scene, Julie's housekeeper weeps inconsolably, telling her employer, "I am crying because you are not."


However, human beings are biologically wired for connection. Even when Julie creates a completely new, isolated, and incognito life for herself (assuming her maiden name Vignon), she ends up forming a connection with Lucille. Liberation is not feasible by the path Julie adopts because it goes against a human being's evolutionary inheritance. Rather liberation from suffering comes with acknowledging that sadness, just like any other emotional state, is intrinsic to human life. In the end, Julie embarks on the path to liberty by embracing her old life and continuing from there, instead of the ab initio life she was attempting. This takes the form of completing her husband's unfinished symphony, beginning a relationship with Olivier, and providing legal acknowledgment of paternity for Patrice's child.


Remembrance of things past


Julie wishes to forget the past, but it relentlessly pursues her. She carries a blue chandelier from the blue room of her house, which was presumably Ana's room. She hears a street musician playing Patrice's unfinished symphony, leaving her to wonder how he knew the music. Olivier tracks her down to her Paris apartment on Rue Mouffetard. A young boy who witnessed the car accident contacts her, intending to return a necklace he found at the scene and shares her husband's last words. In an improbable twist, she sees Olivier on television at a sleazy theater where she had gone to assist Lucille.


We are shaped by our memories, which allow us to connect with each other. Julie's mother, who has lost her memory (probably due to Alzheimer), cannot support her daughter through her grief. After meeting Patrice's mistress, Julie visits the nursing home where her mother resides but realizes the futility of sharing her feelings with someone who no longer remembers. Memory, therefore, is both a blessing and a curse.


The real Julie


After the accident, Julie wears a mask of coldness. She avoids forming human connections and remains distant from everyone. However, the real Julie lurks in the background. We see her kindness early in the film when she instructs her lawyer to ensure there is sufficient money for her housekeeper. Later, when Lucille is distraught upon seeing her father in the audience of her sex show, she calls Julie late at night for emotional support. After refusing initially, she relents and meets her at the venue. Finally, Julie bequeaths her home to Patrice's mistress, and offers to legally acknowledge the yet unborn child's paternity.


Julie is not only generous but also self-effacing. She is reluctant to take credit for her work in completing Patrice's unfinished symphony. Olivier refuses to publish the final version under his own name, admitting that the version he had attempted without Julie's assistance was mediocre. He insists that Julie's significant contributions be acknowledged and convinces her to publish the superior version under her name. This signals that Julie had been an important artistic collaborator to Patrice for years without any public recognition.

Affogato


One of the pleasures of watching a foreign language film is the curiosity it sparks about whether an unusual action is specific to the plot or typical of the culture. In François Truffaut's The 400 Blows a father reduces his teenage son's cigarette allowance as punishment for a misdeed. Was it common for adolescents to smoke at home in 1960s France, or was this a plot point highlighting a neglectful father? In Three Colors: Blue Julie pours hot coffee over ice cream. Was she simply distracted, or is that a cultural practice? A quick Google search reveals that this is indeed a thing called affogato, which literally means "drowned" in Italian, referring to the act of drowning ice cream in coffee.


Three Colors: Blue is a deceptively fast-paced film. It feels slow because the characters are subdued, and there are many solitary shots of Julie. However, a lot happens within its 90-minute duration. Even a momentary distraction may cause viewers to hit the rewind button to catch crucial events they missed.


Film 2-Three Colors: White (1994)


The plot


The second film of the trilogy is based on the theme of equality. The plot centers around the tumultuous relationship between a Polish man, Karol Karol (played by Zbigniew Zamachowski), and a French woman, Dominique Vidal (played by Julie Delpy). The movie begins in a Parisian courtroom where Dominique is seeking a divorce from Karol, who is resisting the dissolution of their marriage. The concept of equality is highlighted when Karol complains to the judge that he is not being treated equally to Dominique because he cannot speak French. Interestingly, this scene first appears in the previous film, Three Colors: Blue when Julie stumbles into the courtroom while searching for her deceased husband's mistress, Sandrine.



Unlike Three Colors: Blue, which was set exclusively in France, the story of Three Colors: White unfolds across Paris and Warsaw. This is a story of two revenges- in Paris, Dominique inflicts pain on Karol and in Warsaw, it is the other way round.


In the Paris arc of the story, Dominique gets a divorce on the grounds that Karol could not consummate the marriage. While Karol suffers from impotence now, they were sexually active prior to getting married. Divorce is not the only misfortune that befalls Karol in Paris. He loses the hair salon he co-owned with Dominique, his money and his legal residency in France.


In the Warsaw arc of the story, Karol returns to Poland and reinvents himself as a successful businessman. He then fakes his death, leaves his money to Dominique and then frames her for his murder!


While the film's plot centers on the fireworks between Karol and Dominique, a third pivotal character, Mikolaj (played by Janusz Gajos), is introduced. Mikolaj encounters Karol playing a Polish tune at a Paris metro station and introduces himself as a fellow Pole. Unlike the destitute and single Karol, Mikolaj is financially stable and has a loving family, yet he is unhappy and desires to die. He offers Karol a handsome reward to end his life, hoping to avoid the moral burden of committing suicide himself.


Observations


Equality


In this film, equality likely means Karol and Dominique getting even with each other, a far less lofty interpretation than the ideals of the French Republic.


Dominique doesn't stop at humiliating Karol by making his impotence public knowledge in court. She sets fire to the salon they had jointly owned, intending to blame her ex-husband for arson. When he calls her from a public telephone, she makes orgasmic noises to convey that she is having sex with another man at that moment. Karol's path to revenge is far more tortuous. Like the Count of Monte Cristo, he must first become wealthy to exact his revenge, which requires time, ingenuity, and criminality on Karol's part.


Animal spirits


The film is set a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Poland, during this time, was at the early stage in its journey towards a market based economy. Karol's transformation from a barber at a neighborhood salon to a ruthless businessman mirrors Poland's evolution and is the most entertaining segment of the film.


Upon returning to Warsaw, Karol secures a job as a bodyguard at a money exchange, which he knows is a front for more dubious businesses. Pretending to be a simpleton, he discovers that his employers plan to buy land from Polish peasants at low prices, anticipating a surge in value as Western companies like IKEA prepare to build warehouses in the area. Karol outsmarts them by purchasing land from a peasant for $5,000 and selling it to his former bosses at ten times the price. Although his bosses want to kill him, they realize that Karol has willed the land to the Catholic Church, complicating their acquisition plans if he died.


Truth is stranger than fiction


Since Karol has lost his papers, he hides in a trunk that Mikolaj checks in as luggage on a flight from Paris to Warsaw. This plot point might have seemed bizarre when the film was released in 1994. However, remarkably, Karol's method of returning to Poland parallels Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn's escape from Japan to Lebanon nearly three decades later!


Desire


In Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, romantic passion unravels the titular character's life. The primal force of sexual desire can drive people to make foolish decisions. The best we can hope for is to avoid making particularly damaging choices under its influence, such as marrying the wrong person. Karol shares this common human flaw but allows his passion to drive him to extreme actions, like framing his ex-wife for a fake murder.


Karol's behavior is a pity as he displays great emotional intelligence in another context. When Mikolaj insists on his wish for an assisted suicide, Karol takes him to a rail line and shoots him. But it turns out that the bullet fired was a blank. Karol wanted Mikolaj to face the moment of mortality and then decide whether he truly wanted to go through with the plan. Mikolaj changes his mind, thus proving the effectiveness of Karol's somewhat unconventional psychological intervention.


The reward


The film concludes on a somewhat hopeful note as Karol receives confirmation of Dominique's love when he sees her crying at his funeral. However, the ending remains ambiguous. Karol watches Dominique making gestures from her prison cell, where she is incarcerated for his alleged murder. While the exact meaning of these gestures is unclear, they bring tears of joy to Karol's eyes. We might question whether Dominique's gestures were actually intended for Karol, given the considerable distance from which he observes her through binoculars. Nevertheless, what matters for the narrative is that Karol finds closure, regardless of the validity of his interpretation.


Three Colors: White is a breezier and more cheerful movie than Three Colors: Blue if not for any other reason than that there is no death involved (even the suicidal Mikolaj lives!).


Film 3-Three Colors: Red (1994)


The plot


The third and final film of the trilogy explores the theme of fraternity, focusing on the love and longing of three characters in Geneva.


The first character is Valentine Dussaut (played by Irène Jacob), a beautiful model involved in a long-distance relationship with Michel, who resides in London. Although Michel is never seen on screen, his controlling and possessive nature is palpable through their phone conversations.


The second character is Auguste Bruner (played by Jean-Pierre Lorit), a law student aiming to become a judge. Auguste lives near Valentine, and they frequent a restaurant called Chez Joseph, yet they do not know each other. He suspects his girlfriend Karin (played by Frédérique Feder) of cheating on him and consumed by jealousy, climbs to her window where he witnesses her in bed with another man.


The third and most memorable character is Joseph Kern (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant), a retired judge who spends his days eavesdropping on his neighbor's telephone conversations using radio equipment.


Joseph serves as the connection between Valentine and Auguste, despite their lack of acquaintance as neighbors. Valentine's introduction to Joseph is serendipitous: she discovers his address after her car collides with a German Shepherd wearing a tag bearing his details. Despite being repulsed by Joseph's habit of eavesdropping, Valentine finds herself inexplicably drawn to him, albeit not romantically. Among the neighbors Joseph spies on is Karin, the girlfriend who Auguste suspects of infidelity.


Observations


Fraternity


The word fraternity refers to a sense of friendship and support among a group of people. This film traces the evolution of fraternity between Joseph and Valentine.


The beginning of their friendship is not a promising one. Valentine is repulsed by Joseph's coldness. When she says that his dog, who has just been hit by her car, needs to be taken to a vet, Joseph expresses indifference (though he later sends her money to compensate her for veterinary expenses). In another scene, when he has made her eavesdrop on a conversation between a closeted married man and a male lover, he predicts, in a cavalier manner, that the married gay man would eventually kill himself by jumping from a window. Yet, Valentine is able to discern that behind Joseph's negative worldview is a deep injury of the heart.


It turns out that Joseph's past is simply a replica of Auguste's present. Both Joseph and Auguste are in the same profession, one is a retired judge while the younger man passes the judicial examination during the course of the film. Both catch their partners in a sexual act with another man. Both the women move to London to be with their lovers and their jilted partners follow them. Joseph's story though has understandably progressed much further. The woman he loved eventually dies. In a coincidence, her lover, Hugo Holbling, appears later in Joseph's court as a defendant. Instead of recusing himself from the case, Joseph pronounces him guilty. Disturbed by the questionable morality of this action, he retires from the profession.

The act of sharing his story demonstrates Joseph's willingness to be vulnerable in front of Valentine. This is because Valentine, despite being disgusted by the phone hacking, embraces his humanity by expressing interest in his life and listening to him. She, in turn shares an intimate detail from her own family. Her brother, Marc, has become a drug addict after discovering that he was not his father's son.


Valentine's reaction to his eavesdropping has such an impact that Joseph makes a voluntary confession to the authorities and faces the legal consequences. Hence, fraternity is a powerful force because it connects us with other human beings and encourages us to act better.


Joseph's feelings for Valentine appear to be more than just fraternity though. He is probably attracted to her (understandable since she is young and beautiful). He tells Valentine that he dreamt she was 50 and in the dream, she wakes up next to a man. When Valentine asks him who the man was, Joseph demurs. He also tells her that perhaps she is the right woman whom he never met earlier.


At the end of the film, fraternity is depicted in a broader way than just the relationship between Joseph and Valentine. Valentine and Auguste happen to be traveling in the same ferry across the English channel. The ferry meets with an accident and only seven people survive. The survivors, apart from Valentine and Auguste, include characters from the prior films including Olivier Benoit and Julie de Courcy (nee Vignon) from Three Colors: Blue, and Karol Karol and Dominique Vidal from Three Colors: White. While these characters do not know each other, we know their stories and can empathize with the human condition that connects them all. We can conclude that strangers are simply friends that we don't know yet and hence, we should feel a sense of fraternity with all our fellow human beings.


Coincidence


The coincidences in the film stretch credulity. The fact that the lead characters across the trilogy were survivors of the same boat accident can be explained by concluding that the film itself was made on the survivors. However, the eerie parallels between Auguste and Joseph's lives lend a supernatural aura to the story. These parallels extend beyond thematic elements like betrayal by a lover to uncanny coincidences in their life events. For instance, when Auguste drops his books on the street, the page he glimpses contains crucial information for his judicial exam—an experience Joseph later echoes when his books' elastic snaps in a theater, revealing a similar pivotal detail. Additionally, both men seem to emotionally distance themselves from their dogs at crucial junctures. Auguste's presence at Joseph's trial, supporting Karin and other victims of the eavesdropping crime, further links these two men.


Even if Auguste and Joseph can exist in the same universe, what are the chances that Joseph would be spying on Auguste's conversations! This raises the question: did Joseph fabricate his entire narrative based on snippets overheard on the phone, simply to captivate Valentine's interest?


Judge vs. spy


Joseph's rationale for eavesdropping is peculiar yet oddly fulfilling. Having served as a judge, he grappled with the weight of determining guilt or innocence with incomplete information, haunted by cases like Hugo Holbling's where he may have erred. By listening in on others now, he seeks a more definitive grasp of truth instead of relying on conjectures as he did in his former career as a judge.


Three Colors: Red is a visually stunning film, particularly notable for its pervasive use of vibrant red hues throughout the frames. In an era dominated by instant gratification and dating apps, the profound loves and yearnings of Joseph, Auguste, and Valentine resonate deeply. However, contemporary viewers might question whether their intense emotions could be directed toward more ostensibly productive pursuits.



The films in this trilogy require viewers to pay attention and we are rewarded for the cognitive effort in two ways.


First, we can enjoy the way the characters of the protagonists- Julie de Courcy, Karol Karol and Joseph Kern-reveal themselves over time.


Second, we can fill in the ellipses that the director leaves for us. For example, Auguste is initially shown abandoning his dog at a lamppost, but later he is seen carrying the dog while catching a boat to England. However, when he survives the boat accident, the dog is no longer with him. Another instance of this is the depiction of Karol Karol and Dominique Vidal as survivors of the ferry accident, suggesting they were together at the time of the incident. The newsreader mentions that Julie Vignon's husband died a year ago. Since Karol and Dominique's divorce took place after Patrice de Courcy's death, and the newsreader also refers to Karol as a businessman, we can infer that Dominique was released from prison and reconciled with Karol.


Liberty, equality and fraternity in this series of films are viewed as emotional states instead of political ideals. We may live in a free country but are we ever liberated from the human condition of pleasure and pain? We may be politically equal citizens but do we feel equal to those whose lives we envy on our social media feeds? We may feel fraternity with abstract tribes (nation, religion, political ideology) but can we extend fraternity to people in the concrete, especially when we cannot emotionally or culturally relate to them?


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