La Double Vie de Véronique

I always get people coming up to me on buses and on the streets (of fire) thinking I’m some guy named Rob, as in Robert. That’s not my name, I don’t know these people, they have clearly mistaken me for somebody who I presume looks like I do.

But what if my name was Rob, or what if it wasn’t but I still kinda knew these people? That’s sorta what La Double Vie de Veronique is like for me. It’s like Being Rob But Not Being Rob: The Movie. This film is like a screen representation of all those dreams I’ve had that involve this mystic Rob, only this film has fewer pickaxe fights.

La Double Vie de Veronique is a pretty abstract film, but I think it speaks to things that we all feel but have trouble describing through its captivating atmosphere and understated performances. This film deals with a lot of issues such as identity, the unpredictability of our emotions, and human connection.

This movie tells the story of two women who look identical because they’re played by the same actress, a technique developed further by Eddie Murphy. One is named Veronique and lives in rural France, the other is Weronika and lives in rural Poland. The actress playing both roles is Irene Jacob, a French actress, who apparently learned Polish for this film.

I’ve been pretty sceptical about believing that actors learn languages for movies ever since that movie where Nicole Kidman apparently learned Russian to play an evil mail order bride. For the most part all she did was make foreign sounding mumbles and occasionally say a Russian phrase that in no way corresponded to the subtitled dialogue at the bottom of the screen. The same kinda goes for Eastern Promises, but at least that movie had a good eye stabbing. But Veronique’s director, Krzysztof Kieslowski, is a Polish man, and since he’s not making some wacky Russian-bashing farce like that other film I would expect him to push Irene for a certain standard of fluency. I don’t speak Polish, so I’ll assume Irene did a good job.

The two women share a connection yet have never met. Their emotions effect each other and they feel each other’s lifeforce. Pretty heavy shit if you ask me. When one is in love, the other feels inexplicable euphoria, when Weronika dies, Veronique feels a sudden emptiness. These feelings are more than just indigestion.

After a Puppeteer visit the school where Veronique teaches, she starts getting mailed crazy clues that lead her into a big puzzle. Ultimately, Veronique follows the clues that lead her to the café in a station in Paris where she finds the Puppeteer waiting for her. I think the Puppeteer is supposed to represent God in this film because he controls little fake people through strings and then manipulates real people through less obvious means. He tells Veronique of how he is writing a novel about two identical women living independent lives, so in sense he has invented Veronique. He has some control over Veronique’s actions, but not total.

The Puppeteer acts pretty much like how I would expect God to act. If I created somebody as hot as Veronique I’d make a second one and put her somewhere else, too. Like they do with MacDonalds. But eventually I think I’d get wierded out by making the same person twice and kill one of them off in some quick way so I could get on with my God day and forget about that troubling moment of unoriginality when I made the same person twice. If you’ve ever played that video game The Sims, you’ve probably actually experienced this.

The Puppeteer also has sex with Veronique, which God must be tempted to do with his hotter creations, and in a way God does kinda fuck us all from time to time. After spooning, He snivels a bit and when it comes to his relationship with Veronique He shows the kind of ambivalence for which God has been famous if you read past Genesis. Working in mysterious ways and the such.

This film asks more questions than it answers and has lots of sex scenes yet was not that big a mainstream hit in USA and did not even produce a straight to video sequel. I don’t know why films that leave so many things a mystery are the ones that never yield sequels. Strangely, it’s movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer, that answer more questions than they ask, that produce sequels that answer even more questions that were never asked by the first film.

I don’t see why there couldn’t be even more Veroniques elsewhere in the world. Modern computer effects could even have them all converge in one place. I’m sure God Puppeteer is far from done playing games with humans, he’s probably at least got a few more wimpers and ambivalent pouts left in him.

This film has recently been rereleased in its original cut by those good people at Criterion, who do bang-up jobs of releasing very special editions of lots of snobby art house classics like The Tin Drum, Le Samourai and throwing in the occasional headscratcher like Michael Bay’s Armageddon, or Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy. Previously it was only available on VHS, which for you kids, is an old video format that did not even bother measuring the highness of ‘D’ nor did it have blu or any other misspelled color of rays. That cut was created by the Weinstein brothers and highlighted the relationship Veronique had with her father in the closing passages. The original cut, now available, highlights Veronique’s relationship with nature.

I wish I could get all upset about being deprived of this original cut, but it actually doesn’t make that much of difference. The Kieslowski cut highlighting nature is a little more open to interpretation, but honestly, after a movie about identical mystically connected women involving a God-like puppeteer telling one of them that she is a fictional character and then having sex with her, I use the term “more concrete conclusion” pretty fucking loosely.

Anyway, this is one of my favourite artsy movies, and Criterion does their usual great job in transferring the film to look great. For now Criterion is still only putting out regular DVDs, but the ‘D’ looked pretty high to me and I did not feel like I needed rays of any color to enjoy this film any more. So if you like the usual stuff Criterion rereleases and not the Kevin Smith shit, check this out. Even if you’ve already seen it, this cut will help you reconnect with nature though a film you’re already pretty used to.