The Double Life of Veronique
Imagine that out there is another you--someone who looks and sounds just like you, but is living a different life, if only by degrees. The Double Life of Veronique is a story of two young women--Weronica and Véronique, both played by Irène Jacob--separated by space, possessing an undiscovered connection to one another. They are from different nations, speaking different languages--Polish and French--but both share a passion for music. A momentary observation by Weronica of her doppelganger one day in Krakow is the key moment, the fulcrum upon which their mutual lives pivot.
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Less than the first full half of Krzysztof Kieślowski's The Double Life of Veronique is concerned exclusively with Weronica with nary a hint at the transition to come. The changeover is like the dramatic turns featured in some of Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers like Psycho and Vertigo, although The Double Life of Veronique is more of a dramatic mystery. Weronica is an opera singer, although it becomes clear that her original passion was to play the piano, a desire cut short by an accident when she was younger. In this sense, Weronica herself is leading a double life; while her passion for music is still fostered, it is in an inauthentic fashion. This is the root of the beautiful yet sorrowful singing voice she has, a quality observed by the music director for a theater in Krakow. She wraps her fingers around a stray shoelace in an idiosyncratic way to assuage her anxiety and tension. Weronica remarks to her father that she feels that she's "not alone in the world", that she's connected to something bigger, although she doesn't know what. That connection, an invisible cord, is almost tangible when Véronique snaps a photo of her quite by accident at a demonstration she's passing through. One of the notable visual hallmarks of The Double Life of Veronique is that the film always seems to be under the influence of a filter. Many scenes carry a strong favoritism toward one color, such as the golden tinge when Weronica goes to visit her aunt, or the greenish glow which emanates throughout the halls of Véronique's apartment building. It is as though the world were being viewed through filters, in color and other ways. As Weronica rides the train to visit her aunt in Krakow, she stares out at a church through the distortions in the window as it alters and bends to her perspective. She stares through a transparent rubber ball with plastic stars embedded within it, and again sees the world through new eyes. Even Véronique first unconsciously glimpses Weronica through the filter of a camera lens. The message is then that the world is influenced by our perceptions of it, and a life which might be a mirror to another's would be both similar and different depending on the filters.
Following a climactic moment in The Double Life of Veronique, the film relinquishes its point of view to Véronique, who senses the sudden disconnect, the loneliness in the world. From then on, moments of her life are punctuated by echoes of Weronica, reverberations of the life of a woman she did not know, but somehow was bound to on a spiritual level. Just as Weronica was in love with a young man named Antek (Jerzy Gudejko), Véronique feels herself in love, although she doesn't yet know who it is, which she in turn confesses to her father. She feels the sudden urge to quit her own piano lessons and feels oddly drawn to the performance of a puppeteer, who gives a showing with his marionettes which is a sorrowful tale of mortality, but also one about rebirth and liberation of the soul. She begins to receive odd calls late at night, playing the same song Weronica performed in Krakow, and receiving totemic gifts, like a shoelace similar to Weronica's--more clues to build a puzzle for Véronique which she understands only at the most spiritual of levels. Key elements teased in Weronica's life--the sound of a motorcycle or the dream of the same brick church from the train ride to Krakow--become shadows of the past which swirl up and haunt Véronique. Véronique is forced to become a detective of sorts, struggling to uncover the secret behind this déjà vu-infused series of coincidences; she even goes so far as to implement a magnifying glass to this end. Although preceding his Three Colors trilogy, many of the same themes and stylistic choices felt in that series are prefaced in The Double Life of Veronique, including Irène Jacob's casting as a woman caught in the spiral of coincidence and fated encounters. The ubiquitous duality of The Double Life of Veronique also echoes Ingmar Bergman's psychological drama about duality and the abdication of personality, Persona; in fact, Irène Jacob shares much of the same youthful vivacity that Bibi Andersson possessed. Véronique's odyssey is essentially a journey of self-discovery, albeit the "self" she's discovering is a part of her soul that had been splintered off through time and space. The Double Life of Veronique teases justifications or possibilities for this series of coincidences, but is vague enough that they are open to interpretation. I prefer the idea that there is a greater framework binding souls to one another, and when you look through just the right filter, and with just the right amount of luck, you can make out the latticework behind this great apparatus.
Recommended for: Fans of a sympathetic mystery which toys with the idea of identity and self and how individuality is but a facet on a larger gemstone--how our world is filtered through our experiences--our thread--in the fabric of the cosmos.
Following a climactic moment in The Double Life of Veronique, the film relinquishes its point of view to Véronique, who senses the sudden disconnect, the loneliness in the world. From then on, moments of her life are punctuated by echoes of Weronica, reverberations of the life of a woman she did not know, but somehow was bound to on a spiritual level. Just as Weronica was in love with a young man named Antek (Jerzy Gudejko), Véronique feels herself in love, although she doesn't yet know who it is, which she in turn confesses to her father. She feels the sudden urge to quit her own piano lessons and feels oddly drawn to the performance of a puppeteer, who gives a showing with his marionettes which is a sorrowful tale of mortality, but also one about rebirth and liberation of the soul. She begins to receive odd calls late at night, playing the same song Weronica performed in Krakow, and receiving totemic gifts, like a shoelace similar to Weronica's--more clues to build a puzzle for Véronique which she understands only at the most spiritual of levels. Key elements teased in Weronica's life--the sound of a motorcycle or the dream of the same brick church from the train ride to Krakow--become shadows of the past which swirl up and haunt Véronique. Véronique is forced to become a detective of sorts, struggling to uncover the secret behind this déjà vu-infused series of coincidences; she even goes so far as to implement a magnifying glass to this end. Although preceding his Three Colors trilogy, many of the same themes and stylistic choices felt in that series are prefaced in The Double Life of Veronique, including Irène Jacob's casting as a woman caught in the spiral of coincidence and fated encounters. The ubiquitous duality of The Double Life of Veronique also echoes Ingmar Bergman's psychological drama about duality and the abdication of personality, Persona; in fact, Irène Jacob shares much of the same youthful vivacity that Bibi Andersson possessed. Véronique's odyssey is essentially a journey of self-discovery, albeit the "self" she's discovering is a part of her soul that had been splintered off through time and space. The Double Life of Veronique teases justifications or possibilities for this series of coincidences, but is vague enough that they are open to interpretation. I prefer the idea that there is a greater framework binding souls to one another, and when you look through just the right filter, and with just the right amount of luck, you can make out the latticework behind this great apparatus.
Recommended for: Fans of a sympathetic mystery which toys with the idea of identity and self and how individuality is but a facet on a larger gemstone--how our world is filtered through our experiences--our thread--in the fabric of the cosmos.