Long ago, I decided that limiting myself to works of art with messages consistent with my own worldview would be far too restrictive. In the world of music, for example, the vast majority of great pieces written prior to the Baroque period had religious connotations. So also did a lot of paintings. In the Dark Ages, the Catholic Church was the foremost patron of the arts. If, as an atheist, I were to close myself off to works promoting religious themes, I would deprive myself of the enjoyment of centuries worth of marvelous creations. Despite my lack of theist inclinations, my music collection includes all twelve Haydn masses (which is no mean feat), all of the 200+ Bach Cantatas, as well as hundreds of other Masses, Requiems, Te Deums, and so forth. I don’t subscribe to a word of the text of these pieces but the music is sometimes utterly sublime.

Cinema, having arisen in a time when most art is secular rather than sacred, poses less of a challenge in that respect, but the same principle of openness to divergent viewpoints extends to films that promote a particular political or social viewpoint. I’ve learned to evaluate separately the artistic merits of a film and my feelings about the validity of its message. In a way, all of us exercise that distinction here at Epinions when we rate reviews. We rate reviews based on style, inclusion of useful information, and a well-reasoned point of view – not whether we happen to agree or disagree with the viewpoint or film rating.

Krzysztof Kieslowski is one of my favorite directors, but I doubt very much that he and I share very much of the same philosophical orientation. Kieslowski is fascinated with the notions of coincidence, unexplainable intersections in human existence, and fate. Although the thematic substance of Kieslowski’s films in not overtly religious in the conventional sense, the notions that he returns to with regularity are ones typically used to support a mystical, spiritual or occult orientation toward life and a dismissal of rationality. The basic argument goes something like this: coincidences occur with such regularity as to defy rational explanation and therefore furnish evidence of unexplainable supernatural forces. Coincidences, by this treatment, are basically junior miracles. The argument is, of course, particularly spurious in relation to fictional events in a film, since the “coincidences” have been creatively constructed by the script writer. The higher “supernatural” element is the creative genius of the author and nothing else. I personally have never encountered an event in my life that begged for non-rational explanation. Moreover, I’ve been uniformly impressed with how much more beautiful the rational explanations of phenomena are – e.g., natural selection, the dynamics of the solar system, the neural basis of human consciousness, etc. – than were the corresponding pre-scientific supernatural speculations.

When I was a kid, I attended a grade school called “Mystic School”, named after the Mystic River, the same River that provided the title for the recent Sean Penn movie, about the same time that I took up reviewing movies. What an amazing coincidence! Or, alternatively, natural selection may have gradually refined our neural processors to pick out recurrence (of words or sensory perceptions) because recurrence often implies causal events relevant to survival (though other times only coincidence) . We notice coincidence because of its resemblance to meaning. For those intent on quenching their existential thirst for meaning, coincidences can be seen everywhere, like figures in a Rorschach inkblot. So, you can see that despite my years at Mystic School, I failed to master mysticism. I guess I just didn’t learn my lessons. Kieslowski, however, mastered his. I don’t buy his premise, but I love the artistry that goes into his films.

The Story: Two girls are born on the same day – one in France and one in Poland. The French girl is named Veronique and the Polish lass Veronika. Both are brought up with a wonder of nature. Both are musically gifted and encouraged to develop their singing skills. Both suffer from a cardiac dysrhythmia. Most amazingly, however, the two girls grow up to be young women who look identical (both are brilliantly performed by actress Irene Jacob). Both have the same green eyes and dark hair, identical faces and figures. One of the girls, Veronique, also has an abiding sense that she exists in two different places in the world. Obviously, what Kieslowski is toying with here, is the age-old notion of a doppelganger – the idea that each of us has, somewhere in the world, a look-alike and spiritual kin with whom we share some kind of mystical connection. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, we feel our doppelganger’s pain. We learn from our doppelganger’s mistakes and he or she from our own. If we encounter our doppelganger, however, one of us must die. (That last line should be read to the imagined accompaniment of spooky music!)

With two identical young women played by the same actress, cross-cutting would lead the audience into utter confusion. Instead, after the initial pre-credit introduction of the concept, with the simultaneous births and similar up-bringings, the rest of the first third of the film follows Veronika almost exclusively until her untimely death. The latter two-thirds of the film then takes up the life of Veronique. Veronika and Veronique intersect only once. Veronique is part of a tour group visiting eastern Europe. In Cracow, Veronika happens to be walking through the square as the tour group is being hurriedly loaded back onto their bus in the midst of a chaotic student demonstration. Veronika spots Veronique as she is getting on as well as in the bus. Veronique is busy taking snap-shots and doesn’t notice Veronika although she unknowingly snaps a picture of her.

The Polish Veronika has a beautiful singing voice and a passionate love for singing, performing in her high school choir. Later, she accompanies a pianist friend to a choir rehearsal and, singing along with them, attracts the attention of the choir’s director, who invites Veronika for an audition. Despite little experience or training, Veronika wins the competition by dint of the natural beauty of her voice. Her reward, is an opportunity to perform a choral work in concert with a full orchestra. Veronika’s heart condition is growing worse and she collapses momentarily on a sidewalk bench. A man passing by in a trench coat briefly flashes her. Later, Veronika’s big concert takes place, and she literally sings her heart out. Her passionate rendition proves more than her heart can handle and she collapses and dies on stage.

Back in France, Veronique is, at that moment, in the throes of passion with her boyfriend. Immediately after, she lapses into a melancholy that she cannot explain – to her boyfriend or herself – other than that she feels like she has lost someone and is grieving. The next day, she informs her singing instructor that she has decided to discontinue instruction. She will make her way as a music teacher rather than as a performer.

One day, Veronique’s class attends a school assembly – a puppet show provided by Alexandre Fabbri (Phillippe Volter). Though they’ve never met, Veronique and Alexandre’s eyes meet in one of those “meaningful moments.” Alexandre becomes obsessed with Veronique or is it the other way around? Veronique does some snooping around and discovers that Alexandre is also an author of fanciful children’s books. For his part, Alexandre somehow gets Veronique’s address and phone number, calls her once late at night anonymously and sends her “clues” in the mail, also anonymously. The first such clue is a shoelace. It turns out that one of Alexandre’s better known children stories is about a shoelace. Next comes an empty cigar box, which Veronique predicts before even opening it, based on her analysis of Alexandre’s books. Finally, Veronique receives a tape recording of ambient sounds. She is able to identify the location as a train depot and further pins down the spot based on the sound made by the door to a particular café. Sure enough, Alexandre is waiting there for her. Her kismet fantasy is somewhat demolished, however, when Alexandre informs her that he was simply testing the plausibility of a woman tracking down an unknown man because he wanted to use the idea in a novel. Nevertheless, after a little cat-and-mouse payback, the two end up in bed together. In the post-sex process of getting to know one another (it was once the other way around), Alexandre spots the photos taken by Veronique in Cracow and comments on the picture of Veronika, assuming it to be Veronique. Veronique, who had never noticed it before, knows that it cannot be herself (she had no coat like the one worn by Veronika). Suddenly, her recurrent feeling of doppelganger seems confirmed. Alexandre creates puppets that look like Veronique – two, of course, not one – and writes a story based on Veronique’s double life. Fade to black!

Themes: Kieslowski’s message, I suppose, is something akin to isn’t life mysterious and wonderful, and full of unexplainable coincidences and fantastic intersections of fate? Art certainly is, but art is not real life. Art is beautiful and fantastic and all the more enjoyable for being so. That much of his message we can all agree on regardless of philosophical orientation. This is not a film to which one wants to apply a lot of rational analysis. Kieslowski returns to the theme of parallelisms, intersections, and coincidence at the end of his famous colors trilogy, where characters from each of the three segments are suddenly in the same place at the same time. Other than Trois Couleurs and La Double Vie de Veronique (to introduce the French titles for a change), Kieslowski is best known for an extraordinary ten part work called Dekalog (1981).

Kieslowski could have produced a script that was tighter in the conventional manner of tying up more loose ends, but the script he settled on serves his thematic purposes rather well. The mystery of life, say Kieslowski by inference, is not explainable or always reducible to rational comprehension and neither is the story of this film. He encourages us to accept that there are imponderables! It’s a skillful bit of psychological argument, but, in the end, just another psychological fallacy. The doppelganger notion doesn’t stand up to rigorous scrutiny, but who cares. Neither do Frankenstein, Batman, ghosts, or vampires.

Production Values: The real beauty of this film derives from beautiful cinematography, gorgeous choral music, a mournfully dreamy mood, and the superlative performance of Irene Jacob. The color scheme is composed of soft pastels, for the most part. The camera lingers frequently on natural phenomena, shadows and sparkling light, reflections, and images refracted through glass marbles. Much of the rest of the time, the camera lingers on the pristine face of Irene Jacob – which is not at all a bad place for it to rest. The use of music in The Double Life of Veronique is reminiscent of the score for Three Colors: Blue (See Three Colors), which is high complement, since the music in Blue is a significant part of what makes it my favorite foreign film.

I’ve seen Irene Jacob previously, in Kieslowski’s magnificent Three Colors: Red (1994), which is among my top-ten non-English Language film (see Non-English Language Films that pack a wallop). Although The Double Life of Veronique is not as great a film as Red, I like Jacob’s performance here even better than in Red. So too did the jury at the Cannes Festival, which awarded her with the Best Actress trophy in 1991. Frankly, I’d say that she’s everything a man could want in a woman: not only physically beautiful, but subtly expressive and overtly soulful. She exudes both passion and a child-like innocence. She’s got that ever-changing kaleidoscope quality that easily justifies gawking at her for two hours. She also appeared in The Secret Garden (1993). Jacob is really playing two parts in The Double Life of Veronique because Veronika and Veronique are subtly different. Veronika is more aesthetically sensitive and introverted while Veronique is more curious, out-going, adventuresome, and mystical. All of the rest of the performers delivered adequately, though none had really noteworthy parts.

Bottom-Line: Personally, I would have liked to see a little stronger connection made between Veronika and Veronique – perhaps a trip to Cracow by Veronique in search of her Doppelganger, leading to shock and surprise on the part of some of Veronika’s acquaintances, and Veronique finally standing at Veronika’s grave site. That would have tidied things up a bit without giving away any of the mystical inferences. Nevertheless, I love the mood and the mystery of this film and the great performance by Irene Jacob. Not perfect – but darn good cinema. The Double Life of Veronique is in French and Polish with English subtitles and has a running time of 90 minutes.

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age