Red french movie

Alma Garcia

Woody West

Engl. 101

March 9, 2009

(Red) Trois Coulours Rouge

The tricolor French flag’s meaning and is full of symbolism and has a predominant impact on French citizens. For instance the colors of the flag are a series of core values, blue means freedom, white means equality and red means fraternity. The writer and director, Krzysztof Kieslowski, creates a trilogy (athree movie series), which expresses his emotions towards the values that French flag stands for. Each film portrays a story where society or characters try to fix the broken values in their society, this “lead[s] to an alternative description [of Kieslowski] as the ‘victim culture’” (Pountain and Robins 157). In 1994 Kieslowski created a his last master piece of his trilogy. An old retired judgehas the idea that Valentine, a young model, seems to be destined to fix his life through another person, Auguste. In a society where pure freedom and equality cannot be found, faith on one’s destiny seems to be the last refuge they have. Redemption and compassion are components in the story that help reach the ideal between the shared relations that faith and destiny have.

In the film Red byKrzysztof Kieslowski, Valentine a beautiful young model represents compassion. After a fashion show while Valentine drives home, she listens to the radio. The right and top part of the car is really dark, all the light is focused to the right on Valentine’s face and this emphasizes the separate expression printed on her. To the left of Valentine, the things that she passes by, are very blurry whichmakes them less significant. The music in the background is very dramtic, and it helps to anticipate an unpleasant event. In the exact same moment that the rhythm of the music changes, the light focuses on her face and Valentine runs over something and looks very surprised. The fact that she turns her face when she is reverses the car opens up a door to mystery, everything is really dark and itis only possible to appreciate the frame of Valentine’s upper body. Valentine parks the car basically in the middle of the street and right in front of it a dog lays in the floor. The camera is very close to the dog in a lower angle. There is some contrast in the dog to its lower right darkness is very intense, mean while to its left the light is very bright which gives emphasis to the pavementwhere the dog lays. The side walk in the right side of the street does not show any movement and either does the end of the street , showing loneliness in the scene. When Valentine gets out of the car and comes to where the dog is, Kieslowski makes a zoom out and the angle switches right away to Valentine’s face where all the light focuses. This time Valentine’s facial expression is worried. Yetagain there is not movement, but there is a bright, dark, bright, dark pattern going from left to right in the wall behind her. The camera goes back to the dog’s face from an upper angle that indicates that the weakness of the dog comparing to a human. Valentine goes back to her car and opens the back left door and when she does so, the camera zooms out moving also somewhat to the left. This slightlymovement allows to have a better view of the wet pavement where the dog is laying, stressing out the necessity that the dog represents. Then Valentine comes back to the dog and tries to lift it, making a lot of effort because the dog is big; she looks around hoping can help her. The music at this moment has a mysterious and still very dramatic. With a lot of effort Valentine finally places thedog inside the car furthermore she smiles. This whole scene highlights how compassionate Valentine is because after she runs over the dog she can just keep going, however she takes the time to help a hurt animal that needs help.

Kern Joseph is an old retired judge and he represents redemption throughout his actions in the story. Valentine has inspired trust on the judge, and thanks to this...