359 The Double Life of Véronique

[mikeohhh]

Don Paterson in the Sunday Times talking of Robert Wyatt's Sea Song. Best of all, it contained a couple of mistakes; it was the first time I had encountered such a thing on a record. Wyatt had reached for a note or a phrase his lovely, vulnerable cockney falsetto simply couldn't reach or cover; and he had left the mistakes in. I think that's where I learnt that a little audible failure in a great artist is a sign, a guarantee, that they are working just beyond the limits of their ability — and are therefore consumed by something greater than merely the desire to impress us.

Had he never heard the false start to the third verse of "Louie Louie" before?? "Sea Song" is so incredible though and wouldn't be the same if he didn't sound so fragile. What was the occasion of the Times writing about Wyatt? Could you link me to the article?

[Felix]

Had he never heard the false start to the third verse of "Louie Louie" before?? "Sea Song" is so incredible though and wouldn't be the same if he didn't sound so fragile. What was the occasion of the Times writing about Wyatt? Could you link me to the article?

Here goes. I also loved the first paragraph. So true.

Going for a song
Don Paterson on Sea Song by Robert Wyatt
Yesterday, a student handed me a DVD containing 75 albums he thought I might like. There were, I pointed out, a number of things wrong with this. In my day, I boringly ventured, it wasn't just a matter of saving up for a month and buying the album. No, no. The vinyl object of your desire would be stalked for weeks prior to its purchase, then subjected to all the stages of courtly love: mooned over, dreamt about, meticulously researched, sniffed, warily auditioned, checked for its immaculate virginity. It was then played until it would play no more, its every bar and note burnt into the brain, its lyrics and artwork and sleeve notes the subjects of deep exegesis, and its one long groove manually spun backwards for anything you might have missed.
Rock Bottom was the first album Robert Wyatt made after the accident that broke his back and left him paralysed from the waist down. Sea Song is its opener. It's an impossibly lovely, weird affair, half, erm, marine eroticism (“Partly fish, partly porpoise, partly baby sperm whale/Am I yours, are you mine to play withâ€

[dadaistnun]

Irene sings, too (with Vincent Delerm).

[Dylan]

That was adorable!

[Michael]

I've been pondering about the frustration with the original ending expressed by some of you earlier. I actually prefer this over the US ending. We must remember the opening scene with the little Weronika with the "first leaf".. and then the film concludes with Veronique with the tree which I find very fitting and satisfying. Sure, the US ending is lovely in its way of reflecting Veronique but for me, it would work better if it shows just Veronique along with the reflection of herself in the form of Weronika...forget the father. Even with that, I still think the original ending works much better. I don't find anything cold about Veronique feeling the tree ...it's just as warm as Weronika discovering the first leaf.

I watched DLOV for the first time tonight after a ten-year break. Even more majestic now that I'm older.

[marty]

One of my all-time favourite films and haven't seen it for ten years.

[Dylan]

This has really dug into me. I realized that two weeks after seeing it I still couldn't get it out of my mind, that images and sequences and moments and music selections managed to imprint themselves inside me with much more permanence than many other films.

When I posted about it, I had Netflixed it (movie disc only), but today I went out and bought it (and for a very good holiday price, no less). Now it's on my shelf and it looks wonderful, and I've finally seen the second disc, which couldn't be better. And a note to Criterion Dungeon: I also have your "Veronique" wallpaper on my desktop...nice job!

As my earlier posts suggest, I initially found it hard to stay interested during the French scenes, realizing only later that the film achieves its full resonance upon the metaphysical interpretation. I love watching the French scenes through what I now perceive to be Weronika's point of view. With this, I've also come to love the ending, which I initially found difficult, but now find very moving.

We must remember the opening scene with the little Weronika with the "first leaf"

Michael, it's actually little Veronique communicating with nature in the leaf scene, and it's little Weronika looking at the stars. And that just gorgeously mirrors the ending.

It's a fascinating film, presenting many tremendous scenes and ideas which coalesce into one of the most intellectually interesting films I've ever seen.

From DVD Fanatic:

An artful labyrinthine mystery with the resonance and power of a well told ghost story

I couldn't possibly think of a better summation than that.

[Greathinker]

As I was reading the Veronique Chapter in Kieslowski on Kieslowski I kept thinking back to the questions addressed in this thread. Anyone who wants to learn more about the film would do well to check out this book. Maybe I can post a few passages here when I have time.

He refers to one idea he had of the film being different in each theater house in both Poland and France-- different editing, different versions of the film. Knowing the way he edited I'm sure they would have been drastically different. The producer even liked this idea but ultimately the money wasn't there. Interesting. Maybe they talk about this in one of those documentaries on the disc.

[Dylan]

As I was reading the Veronique Chapter in Kieslowski on Kieslowski I kept thinking back to the questions addressed in this thread.

There are excerpts from the "Double Life" chapter in "Kieslowski on Kieslowski" included in the booklet that comes with the Criterion DVD. I haven't gone through the booklet yet myself, but I certainly look forward to doing so later today.

He refers to one idea he had of the film being different in each theater house in both Poland and France-- different editing, different versions of the film. Knowing the way he edited I'm sure they would have been drastically different. The producer even liked this idea but ultimately the money wasn't there. Interesting. Maybe they talk about this in one of those documentaries on the disc.

During her interview on the second disc, Irene Jacob says that Kieslowski had edited ten different versions of "Double Life of Veronique" before settling with the final cut. Jacob also notes that the final cut left many scenes on the cutting room floor. With this in mind, I'm assuming that the footage used in the alternate ending was from one of the other edits of the film, and that he didn't go back and film it (which is what I assumed until I learned more about how this film was edited).

Wong Kar-Wai's amazing "2046" was handled in a very similar manner, with several different editorial approaches made until the final cut was approved by the director.

[Greathinker]

There are excerpts from the "Double Life" chapter in "Kieslowski on Kieslowski" included in the booklet that comes with the Criterion DVD. I haven't gone through the booklet yet myself, but I certainly look forward to doing so later today.

Hey, you're right. The booklet has most, maybe even all of that chapter. Way to go Criterion!

[exte]

What was Andie MacDowell thinking when she turned this down? Anyone know?

[Dylan]

Was she even approached? It's my understanding that he just had her in mind early on (is it possible that in an early draft of his story the characters were Polish and American instead of Polish and French, which is why he had an American actress in mind?), although admitedly I haven't come across a lot of information on this.

But either way, by the the time Irene Jacob auditioned MacDowell was out of the picture because according to Jacob, many actresses had been auditioning when she got the role.

[MichaelB]

Regarding Preisner...

...you can also buy piano arrangements of a selection of his film scores, including many of the best-known Kieslowski pieces (including Véronique, the Three Colours trilogy and even a few Dekalogs).

Any halfway competent pianist should have little difficulty with them - I'm rather worse than that, and was still able to sight-read a fair number.

The link I posted also includes examples, if you have the Sibelius Scorch plug-in. And even if you don't, you can still see this page from the Three Colours: Red score.

[hangthadj]

What was Andie MacDowell thinking when she turned this down? Anyone know?

I'm extremely thankful she wasn't chosen in the end. I can't imagine she'd do worse than she did in The Muse but a performance like that could have ruined this film.

[brunosh]

What was Andie MacDowell thinking when she turned this down? Anyone know?

I'm extremely thankful she wasn't chosen in the end. I can't imagine she'd do worse than she did in The Muse but a performance like that could have ruined this film.

A resounding hear hear! I'm sure I am not alone in the view that said actress's appearance as supposed object of desire in Four Weddings and a Funeral (is it permissible to mention such a frivolous film on this site?) obliterated any remnants of credibility and turned rom-com into dragon fest.

[Felix]

What was Andie MacDowell thinking when she turned this down? Anyone know?

She didn't actually turn it down, as far as I can see. There was a verbal agreement for her to do it but no contract was signed, due to a failing on the part of KK's producer. The agent had even agreed the fee which was half of her normal one.

She was then offered a big role for an American film and signed that one instead. It isn't clear from "Kieslowski on Kieslowski" whether she was still in the frame for Veronique. She might have been as he talks about how he thought she should go for the American film because "it's her world, her kind of money, her life, and it seemed obvious to me that she should accept."

But, thank god for that, and thank god for the overrun on Les Amants De Pont Neuf or we might have had Juliette instead.

[GringoTex]

The last time I watched this was during the theatrical release in 1991, and I was blown away. I've just watched it a second time on DVD and am now shocked by how banal the whole thing is.

Kieslowski's mise-en-scene seems completely rudderless to me. I can't ground it in any kind of reality or aesthetic or ideological tradition, and so it borders on irrelevance. When critics, fans, and Kieslowski himself warn against trying to hold the film accountable to anything, I start to get suspicious. I can't even take the "let your emotions run" route, because I found the marionettes much more human and heartfelt than any of the actors.

I now understand Godard's dismissal of Kieslowski's "designer mysticism." He should have stayed in Poland where he had something to grasp on to.

[arsonfilms]

Although my feelings about this film are on the opposite end of the spectrum from yours, I have to admit that you present a valid point. I think it's safe to say that the premise of the film is commonly held to be overly convenient and contrived. Anyone would grant you that, including, I'm sure, Kieslowski himself.

What grounds the film for me is the solid theoretical exploration of quantum/parallel realities. The idea of having one person choose to follow her passion and suffer for it weighed against another (or, actually, the same) person choose a different path and be content is enough of a narrative foundation that I'd grant the film some merit based on that alone. Run Lola, Run for instance is an identical premise (four times instead of two and without the deeper implications of parallel lives), but Tykwer's work just doesn't have the same beauty to me that Kieslowski's does. The Godard quote is a convenient dismissal, but I rarely feel anything more than professional respect for Godard. None of his films have every really moved me, and the ones that seemed most human (A Woman is a Woman and Masculine, Feminine) even seemed to represent more technical experimentation than anything truely meaningful.

Again, I certainly grant your premise, Gringo, but for whatever reasons this is one of the few films I've seen recently that I can't seem to stop thinking about, and the more I do the richer it feels.

[Mental Mike]

That was the point I tried to make...I read Kieslowski on Kieslowski but I feel like his explanation of the movie's premise is not the movie that eventually was made...Who cares if we have someone far off in another part of the world who is our double? Do I eat something else knowing I have a double? Does it change my decisions in life that are routed and grounded in my own circumstances? Whether there is someone out there exactly like me is irrelevant - What good would this knowledge have for me other than to make me sigh, "Ah, isn't that a nice thing"?

...so I agree with your Godard quote, and I choose to like the movie for other reasons like you guys...

[CW Green]

Who cares if we have someone far off in another part of the world who is our double? Do I eat something else knowing I have a double? Does it change my decisions in life that are routed and grounded in my own circumstances? Whether there is someone out there exactly like me is irrelevant - What good would this knowledge have for me other than to make me sigh, "Ah, isn't that a nice thing"?

This seems to be a moot point but, I thought I'd chime in anyway.

Veronique and Weronika are somehow strangely connected though; they aren't merely two separate entities. Weronika's musical ambitions consumed her and led to her demise; thus, Veronique's sudden decision to abandon her aspirations in music is clearly not a coincidence, this is also evident through Veronique's facial gesture of recognition (ie. this occured in the past), near the end of the movie, during a conversation with the puppeteer; the specifics escape me because it's been awhile since i've seen this but, he mentions something about one of the girls burning her hand on an oven, and the other simultaneously becomes aware of the accident and avoids burning herself on a separate oven somewhere else.

If I just simply misread your post--because fatigue normally clouds the brain--then disregard everything I wrote above.

[GringoTex]

What grounds the film for me is the solid theoretical exploration of quantum/parallel realities.

I was completely unaware of this (the quantum theory aspect) when I posted last night but then read the essay in the Criterion booklet that deals with it. Very interesting, although I still don 't think it carries its own water.

[sevenarts]

Veronique and Weronika are somehow strangely connected though; they aren't merely two separate entities. Weronika's musical ambitions consumed her and led to her demise; thus, Veronique's sudden decision to abandon her aspirations in music is clearly not a coincidence, this is also evident through Veronique's facial gesture of recognition (ie. this occured in the past), near the end of the movie, during a conversation with the puppeteer; the specifics escape me because it's been awhile since i've seen this but, he mentions something about one of the girls burning her hand on an oven, and the other simultaneously becomes aware of the accident and avoids burning herself on a separate oven somewhere else.

Yes, I've always thought -- and I think this might be the way Kieslowski himself explains it -- that Weronika's spirit is in some way guiding the course of her double's life after her own death, in a way correcting the mistakes she made while she was alive. In a way, Veronique is a way of taking another look at Weronika's life, imagining that instead of dying she changed her life. The film is, ultimately, almost a paeon to worldy pleasures. Whereas Weronika pursued her artistic career to the detriment of every other aspect of her life (even forfeiting her life itself), Veronique had the chance to find love and enjoy herself. I'm not sure the film necessarily picks one over the other, but it makes it clear that there is a choice, and presents the two different possibilities for that choice. I'm not sure why some people object to the mysticism in Kieslowski -- maybe because it's so subtle, so grounded in an otherwise realistic setting, that it comes off as mere coincidence and seems overly convenient. But I think that's the point, and Kieslowski definitely embraces and mythologizes the coincidence in his films.

I also note that once again in a Kieslowski thread he's being compared to a completely puzzling other director (Godard here? Scorsese in the other thread??). The Godard quote is funny, but you might as easily say of Godard's more recent films that they're "designer philosophy." It'd be equally funny, but also equally untrue. And I love both Godard and Kieslowski, so you needn't choose.

[GringoTex]

I'm not sure why some people object to the mysticism in Kieslowski -- maybe because it's so subtle, so grounded in an otherwise realistic setting, that it comes off as mere coincidence and seems overly convenient.

I agree with this regarding his pre-Veronique films. But post-Dekalog, there are no more realistic settings. Also, the mysticism in his pre-Veronique films doesn't rely on this coincidence mechanism.

[brownbunny]

despite the absence of a more realistic setting, i can't help but feel that its advances and environment, the way the entire film moves and breathes, is uncannily organic

[Dylan]

Courtesy of The Independent, here's a fairly recent (seven month old) interview with Irene Jacob...

Irène Jacob: The picture of innocence

Geoffrey Macnab meets the actress Irène Jacob, whose powerful mystique inspired the director Krzysztof Kieslowski

Published: 05 May 2006

The Swiss actress Irène Jacob exercises a strange fascination on a certain breed of middle-aged male film critic. When her most famous work, Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Véronique (1991), was re-released earlier this spring, even normally hard-bitten reviewers struggled to conceal their crush on her. "Time has not weakened my worship," Anthony Lane said in The New Yorker. "The sheer, heart-stopping beauty of Irène Jacob is what shines out," rhapsodised The Guardian.

What adds to the air of mystery surrounding Jacob is how little she has done since The Double Life of Véronique. She went on to appear in another Kieslowski movie, Three Colours Red (1994), but although she has continued to work regularly, nothing has matched the intensity of those two early performances.

Geoff Andrew, programmer at London's National Film Theatre, suggests that we shouldn't be surprised that her career post-Kieslowski has seemed a little anticlimactic. "What you realise when you meet her is that Kieslowski was making those films around her," Andrew says. "She has this innocence. She gives an impression of goodness which is quite rare. It's also an impression of goodness that is not cloying. That's what gives those Kieslowski films their quality."

Kieslowski was the alchemist. In the hands of other directors, she has failed to shine in the same way. "She's a perfectly able actress but she is not remarkable," Andrew suggests. "We have this iconic impression of her from the two Kieslowski films and it is very hard to overcome those impressions."

When I speak to Jacob, almost our entire conversation is devoted to her films with Kieslowski. She is happy to talk in great detail about her work, but tells you next next to nothing about her own background or circumstances. "I'm not very comfortable with questions about my private life," she has said.

If she does reveal herself, she says it's behind "the protection of a character. It's the distance that creates the poetry." The irony, of course, is that both The Double Life Of Véronique and Three Colours Red expose her in a far more intimate way than any interview could.

Her biographical details are easy enough to unearth. Jacob was born in 1966 in Paris, the only daughter in a family of four children. Her mother was a psychologist and her father a doctor. She moved with her family to Geneva at an early age and stayed there till the mid-1980s, when she began her career.

It is 16 years now since the then unknown Jacob was called to audition for Kieslowski. Her lucky break came courtesy of Andie MacDowell, the American star Kieslowski had originally tried to cast in Véronqiue. MacDowell had already agreed to play the dual role of the two women whose lives are mysteriously linked, but there was a mix-up about contracts and she dropped out.

Jacob had left Geneva a few years before to pursue a career as an actress in France. Her one role of note had been in Louis Malle's wartime-set Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987), which Kieslowski had admired. It is easy to understand why he was so quickly drawn to her. She was not only as photogenic as any model. She had a sensitivity and mournful quality which enraptured him. In Jacob, he had found his perfect muse.

Kieslowski was taking a radical step in Véronique, one that his colleagues in Poland initially regarded with grave suspicion. His work had been rooted in social and political life in Poland. With Véronique, he chose a different way - a psychological, metaphysical way - of dealing with contemporary life. The narrative hinges on coincidence - on the uncanny way two separate women's lives (one in Poland, one in France) seem to correspond. They never meet (the closest they come is when one spies the other from a bus) but their destinies are intertwined.

"The Double Life Of Véronique was about something that usually you can't film - intuitions, perceptions, all this inner landscape of sensation," the actress recalls.

Kieslowski had many, many documentaries in which he would focus intently on unmarried couples, surgeons, night porters or train passengers, as if the closer the camera came to its subjects, the greater the chance of revealing some transcendent truth. The problem, Jacob speculates, is that what most fascinated him in the documentaries were the most intimate moments - and there came a time when he felt uncomfortable filming them.

Kieslowski was making huge demands on Jacob. He didn't just want a performance. He wanted her this most reticent of actresses to open up her personality completely.

On the first day Jacob met Kieslowski, he set her a series of challenging tasks. She was asked to improvise around certain scenes in the script. He studied her with what she makes sound like an almost anthropological curiosity. "He would notice the smallest things - the way you swallowed, or licked your lips, or hummed, or frowned," Jacob recalls. He made her perform a strange test in which she pretended to read a book by someone she loved - "but it was a book about cigars!" He asked her to think about solitude and how she would behave on her own.

It was no accident that Kieslowski's late features, from Véronique onward, have women as protagonists. As he told the author Danusia Stok: "Women feel things more acutely, have more presentiments, greater sensitivity, greater intuition... Véronique couldn't have been made about a man."

But Kieslowski, she says, refused to discuss the underlying themes of the film with her. "That would have meant speaking about metaphysics and chance and doubles. He told me that because the film could be taken on such a poetic level we had to be very concrete. For him, metaphysics and chance was something always there in banal, everyday life - a piece of light, the rain," she recalls.

Véronique gave Jacob a Best Actress award in Cannes. She says she was startled by just how emotionally audiences seemed to identify with the story. "Krzysztof used to say that if we were very personal in the way we told the story, it would not be general and people would be able to take it personally. That's a strange paradox but it's quite true."

Having left Geneva to become an actress, she returned to her home city for her second film with Kieslowski, Red. She plays a fashion model who is thrown together with an elderly, Prospero-like judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) in unlikely circumstances. (She rescues his dog from a car accident.) The judge is an embittered and slightly sleazy figure who spends his days eavesdropping on his neighbours' conversations.

Jacob portrays the Polish master as an intensely serious and hard-working film-maker, but with a sense of humour and affection for his colleagues. Kieslowski had affectionate nicknames for all his cast and crew. He called Jacob "little donkey or "little kangaroo". He was also open to suggestion from anyone in his crew. "His theory was that if you said to people that you already knew what the film was about, nobody would offer any suggestions."

Red was was Kieslowski's final film as a director. He died on 13 March 1996, two years after it was completed. Since then, Jacob has appeared in London's West End, in countless European art-house movies, US indie and Hollywood movies, even in British costume dramas. But Red and Véronique eclipse everything else.