Aug. 20, 2002 - 3:34 am
a.k.a. Trzy Kolory: Bialy, a.k.a. Three Colors: White. you may want to read my Trois Couleurs: Bleu (1993) review if you haven't. just to catch up. this is the second film in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy. the final one of course is Trois Couleurs: Rouge (1994). i decided to go ahead and do the entire trilogy after all. this one wasn't anywhere near as awesome as Blue is, but it's still interesting to watch.
this film deals with a relationship that is unequal. one thing i forgot to mention in the first film's entry is that all three of the films deal with the three revolutionary themes of France. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. i guess you could really call this the equality one. or better yet, the inequality one.
the relationship is that of a married couple. the man loves his wife obsessively, but she has lost her love for him because of his impotence. they were just recently married, but for some reason he could not consummate their marriage. at the beginning of the film, his wife summons him to court for a divorce. after trying over and over to get her to change her mind, he leaves France for his home country of Poland. he stuffs himself into his own suitcase (literally) and makes the trip with only 2 francs in his pocket. he eventually stumbles into money and decides that now he should try to win his wife back for the last time. he has to go to some extremes to get her to Poland though. especially since she won't even talk to him on the telephone.
so this film has an interesting plot, but it doesn't have the same innovative strengths that Blue has. there's no huge musical aspect to this one, the color itself is not expressed as strongly, and the story is not focused completely on one person and his feelings. the artistic magic of the first film is really not present here. and of course it does not have Juliette Binoche.
well, actually Juliette Binoche is in it just for a split second. in the first film, she came into a court room to hear a man asking if he could not get a fair trial because he didn't speak French. it turns out that that was the divorce trial at the start of this film. and that was Karol speaking. he's the protagonist of this film, White. awesome tie-in.