Aug. 29, 2002 - 5:15 am

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Trois Couleurs: Rouge (1994)

a.k.a. Three Colors: Red. this is the third film in the wonderful Three Colors trilogy. see the previous entries on Trois Couleurs: Bleu (1993) and Trois Couleurs: Blanc (1994). after almost a week of dealing with confusing crap trying to find the lost copy of this tape that the library owns, i finally got my hands on it and watched it. it was definitely worth the search. great film.

this one i guess you could say very vaguely deals with the concept of friendship. if you're looking for that whole French motto symbolism stuff that i talked about previously. it has another great female lead, Valentine played by Irene Jacob, who comes to meet an older man who eavesdrops on his neighbors' telephone conversations in order to feed his own sense of the negativity that exists in the world. they end up needing each other because she gains strength from him and he gains a sense of kindness from her. lots of amazing coincidences in the film. he's a retired judge who was destroyed by a woman who broke his heart. we get glimpses of one of Valentine's male neighbors who has the exact same thing happening to him. the rest are too complex to explain.

oh man i was really sad at the beginning of this film. she hits a dog with her car and it's just terrible. terrible and beautiful at the same time because she is trying her best to save its life. and when she looks at the sweet dog's collar nametag and then calls her by her name and the injured dog licks her hand, that was just too much for me.

wonderful performance from Irene Jacob in this film. i wasn't expecting to enjoy seeing her as much as Juliette Binoche, but i really almost did. Kieslowski was a genius. wonderfully complicated interwoven stories that are artistically displayed on the screen. and he had the ability to draw real emotion out of his actors and actresses. these are great films. and oh damn it's after 5.