The Double Life of Veronique

In Brief: Until this past weekend, I had never seen Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique (1991) and was in no way prepared for it. And on one viewing I do not really feel like I can review it — certainly I cannot in any depth. This is a strange, almost hypnotic film. It is a film with a mystery at its core, but it is not a mystery that is solved — nor is it really meant to be solved. It tells two stories, the stories of two women (both played by Irene Jacob). The stories intersect — really the stories bump into each other — but they are separate and told in two more or less consecutive parts, though the first story haunts the film. Weronika is a Polish girl. Veronique is French. They never actually meet, though Veronique captures pictures of Weronika from a tour bus. There are similarities, but the connections are subtle, even delicate. Weronika's story is a tragedy, but not one Veronique ever knows — and yet it informs her own life in ways she can't quite grasp. Neither can the viewer, but it's the overall feeling the film evokes that matters.