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'Red' traces relationship at relaxed French pace

Third Kieslowski installment presents fascinating, haunting view of fraternity

By Lael Loewenstein

Daily Bruin Staff

The third installment in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors Trilogy, Red is a fascinating, at times hauntingly beautiful film. Like its predecessors Blue and White, Red deals with relationships, love, loss and longing. While Blue focused on a woman's struggle for liberty and White centered on a husband's quest for equality, Red deals with fraternity, a much subtler and more complex condition.

Red centers on Valentine (Irène Jacob), a lovely young woman suffering from loneliness and a sort of spiritual malaise in Geneva. Valentine, a model, feels disconnected from everyone and everything in her life. She speaks often by phone with her unseen, boorish boyfriend who is away in England, and occasionally with her drug-addicted brother. But she rarely has face-to-face contact.

That changes rather suddenly when, driving home one day, she accidentally hits a dog. Reading its address on the dog's tag, Valentine goes to seek its owner. What she finds is a cold and bitter old man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who tells her to keep the dog.

Miffed, Valentine takes the dog to the vet and then home with her. But when the dog runs away one day, leading her back to its mysterious owner, Valentine follows. Observing, to her disgust, that the old man, a retired judge, eavesdrops on his neighbors' phone conversations, she urges him to stop. Intrigued, he wants her to return.

A series of conversations between Valentine and the old man follow, during which each peels the protective layers off the other. We learn that the judge was once terribly hurt by a woman many years ago, and that Valentine carries her pain with her everywhere.

That these two disparate souls can reach out to each other, come to understand and care for each other, is the heart of Red. But they never experience sexual involvement, only emotional and spiritual. Because they are so far apart in age, they can only contemplate what might have been. Valentine might have been the judge's soul mate. And he seems to understand her better than anyone else.

Beautifully directed, the conversations between judge and Valentine are as warm, subtle and delicate as anything Kieslowski has yet committed to film. Trintignant and Jacob are exquisite actors, and as they bare themselves emotionally to one another, their pain seems real. Although Red lacks much in the way of plot, the actors' performances compensate for that deficiency.

The ending of the film should remain a secret. But Kieslowski deftly ties together Blue, White and Red, making an immense and lush cinematic tapestry. The director has said this would be his last film. It would be a pity if that turns out to be true.

FILM: Melnitz Movies presents Red. Tonight at 7:30, Melnitz. Admission is free. For more info call (310) 825-2345.