Three Colors: White

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

1994

5 January 2024

See

Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) a ‘hapless hairdresser’, a Pole in Paris who doesn’t speak French, is divorce by his wife Dominique (Julie Delpy) for his inability to be intimate. He’s devastated and doesn’t know what to do. Busking in a metro station he meets Mikolaj (Janusz Gojos) another Parisian Pole who helps him return to Poland.

Think

Karol is out of sorts at the start.  Did love do that to him? Moving to France without knowing French? Being dissatisfied with his work as a hairdresser? Or wanting more in his life and being unable to attain it? Is that what makes him impotent in their marriage, premature in their divorce? Discouraged in his Western European life? I’m glad he found a friend in Mikolaj, who gets it. And that they help one another. To get back home. And stay. In Eastern Europe, where the system doesn’t work as well, but he has the motivation to make it work for him, Karol begins to find himself. After a lost luggage set back, and an altercation or two. He finds his way.

Feel

But it’s all for Dominique. Or it would be. If she wanted him as well. What would he have to do? Change? Improve. How much? Become successful. Ambitious. Competent. Conniving. Manipulative. Powerful. Corrupt? Is that how far they will go to be together again? I don’t know which is the right way. A constant calibration. Learning French and having sex and money is a good start. But is the ending worth it? The way there was.