director: Krzysztof Kieślowski
year: 1991
language: polish/french
length: 1h 38m
watched: september 4, 2024 (1st time)

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I watched this film alone, on a Wednesday night, in the dark. it is the perfect kind of film to watch alone, perhaps because it is a deeply interior, melancholic experience, filled with crystalline moments of poetic beauty, a deep reverence for life, and mystery. it’s the kind of mystery that doesn’t present itself to be solved, but rather, a mystery to be lived — much like life itself.

the premise is surrealist. there are two versions of a young protagonist, Véronique (played by Irène Jacob), living different lives in two different countries. but, despite this film being categorized as “fantasy/thriller,” the resulting narrative from the premise isn’t plot driven. the driving question is not, “does she ever figure it out? and what does she do, once she realizes there’s another version of her, out there?” these are not the stakes. it doesn’t seem to matter.

instead, we’re simply invited to soak in and witness her life experience: her daily routines, tenuous romances, her intuitive awareness of the otherworld, and her unexplainable sorrows. it feels much more like prose poetry, than fiction — particularly in its magnificent use of color tones, light, music, and symbolic visual motifs. so many frames in this movie feel like paintings. you enter the interior spaces — her rooms, apartments, home, beds — with an unfolding quality that allows your entire psyche to inhabit them. I was there, with her, in every moment, fully seeing the world through her eyes. and: witnessing her.

the men in this film — and their romances with Véronique — all carry a quality of stranger-ness to them. there is a poetic distance; a distance which allows for even more intimacy and intrigue. there is minimal dialogue. so much is conveyed in the subtly of their expressions and movements, but left unsaid. then again, she is also an intimate stranger to us — and, a stranger to herself.

had I watched this film a decade ago, I might have found myself completely obsessed by the quality of its melancholic, poetic romanticism. it is, if anything, a portrait of a young woman, alone (yet not alone) in the world — where anything can happen to her: love, sex, beauty, life, and death. it is a portrait of fate, free-will, romance, synchronicities, and, ultimately, a mystical kind of female solitude. it is what I craved for so many years, all throughout my twenties. then, I lived it. now, I’ve seemed to moved onwards.

but, watching this film takes me back there — with a tenderness and recognition of that part of myself, which is still very much alive. watching this film, I had the keen awareness that it was made the year I was born (1991). I had a very strange feeling — as though I were watching my own mother. it made me imagine the textures of her interiorities, her sorrows, her romances, her longings — much before I was born.

at the end of it all, all I wished was for her to find happiness. in its lack of conclusiveness (it’s really not about the man), there is a deep realism to it. it’s poetic in the way that only life can be. like looking at old polaroids. afterwards, I felt imprinted — with polaroids of light shards, and colors, and the scent of a world that lingers in me — which makes the ordinary life feel, somehow, more sacred.

film diary: the double life of Véronique (1991)