TRHEE COLORS: RED
A film review by anonymous
Like all things eternal RED begins and ends in the sea. It is well the film has the complexion of water, the water motif transports the fairy tale, points the way. Benign, sympathetic images answer each other like waves, carrying within them their own inexorable unity and completeness even as they draw upon humanistic traditions from way back when. So it is that Valentine gulps down the life-giving substance before going on the fashion show; exhausted, the bolero trails off, a wedge of light settling on her windshield like a dove. Other lights, other signals follow, and then the inevitable bloodshed that brings her before the judge. He is a dark, pathetic figure who fiddles his straps and spills water all over -- a walking profanity against the human race Beckett would have approved. The all-knowing judge pontifies on the maiden's past while they stalk each other across partitions and wheel in circles, two Peking opera divas at war over justice and truth. The winner renounces his spells and charms, the loser descends into the perfect amber sunset through the tears in her eyes. Biblical allusions abound: Valentine plays "winners-lose" at jackpots and crashes into churches, and indeed she is a most saintly figure, almost made of water herself. Irene Jacob has such a difficult face, now overflowing with radiance, now soulful and thin. It takes a Kieslowski to challenge its many facets, bring out the beauty; that must be why she is his Muse Extraordinaire. It is a special honor to witness that staggering beauty as she takes the runway again, lights in her hair, flanked by a commoner to each side, her bejeweled necklace Kieslowski's thorn crown that absolves us of our failings. Also present is Joseph Kern, thirty years younger by the earnestness in his eyes, and in the stillness before the storm they tell the future, read the signs. (Water has its violent ways too.) With a ballet dancer's grace and fluid steps stilled against time by flowing curtains and the look in those eyes, Valentine throws herself at the theater gate, trying to beat back the wind and the rain. Under whose watchful gaze is she in turn spared by the tempest in the sea? Set in pacific, urban Geneva, RED is strangely elemental, shot almost entirely in the magic hour in the shadow of distant hilltops, from whence lightning issues like judgement on Mount Sinai and the evening sun vanishes like a lost hope. The many interior sunsets in Kern's mansion are memorable indeed. And yet it is morning, ten minutes to eight, when our protagonists are plucked wet and shivering from the English Channel. As the judge looks on, time stops and telescopes on to that exact moment Valentine turns back towards the scene of the carnage. The circle closes on the very imperfect replica of Valentine's canvas-sized profile, accompanied by the tell-tale foghorn which was already there when the picture was first taken. A peaceful note rings out, blossoms into a reprisal of the runway choral, fades away, and finally rises to a crescendo even more glorious than the first. There is always hope then, just as there will be dreams of eternal redemption. And because of RED, there will always be memories of a most profound and absolute beauty.
-- To Stanley, who knew about the lightning, the wind, and the rain
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