Three Colors: White

Released 1994
Cast: Zbigniew Zamachowski, Julie Delpy, Janusz Gajos, Jerzy Stuhr
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Director Krzysztof Kieslowski uses the three colors of the French flag to create his trilogy of colors: Blue, liberty; White, equality; Red, fraternity. This installment is about equality within a marriage, and it's a dark, dry comedy. It opens with Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) being completely humiliated in divorce court by his failure to consummate his marriage to Dominique (Julie Delpy). He was able to perform just fine in his native Poland, but he lost his drive when they moved to France. We don't see any of this, so we can only assume this happened because he felt emasculated since he didn't speak French and was dependent on Dominique in France. You could ask how their courtship worked with them not speaking the same language, but that's never addressed. Karol desperately loves Dominique, but she divorces him and throws him out penniless. He then returns to Poland in some of the movie's funniest scenes and creates a small fortune, but he's after more than money.

White is a nice character study about an obsessed man and his quest for equality with his ex-wife. We don't know Karol's agenda until the very end, when everything is revealed. I don't want to give it away, but I found the ending inconsistent. There was no way Karol would have wanted his revenge to go as far as it did. He may have thought he wanted it to, but he would have faltered because he was too obsessed with Dominique. On the DVD's commentary, we learn Kieslowski's original screenplay had several scenes where Karol tried to end his plan and rescue Dominique, but for some reason that was condensed. A few more scenes would have completed the character study in a way that was consistent for Karol and would have lent more poignancy to the prisons they each found themselves in, but it's still a very good film.

Summary by Bill Alward, May 31, 2003