Valentine, played by Irene Jacob, is beautiful, vivacious, passionate, assertive. We want to sympathize with her. Her personality is sweetened by a certain scent of innocence that causes us to desire identification with her, to simultaneously fall in love with her.
Indeed, her supreme beauty is central to this part of Kieslowski's trilogy.
A very important moment arrives, however, in the studio where she is photographed as a model. We see her sitting there, artificial wind blowing her wet hair about her face. And at the word from the photographer -- "triste" -- her beauty is transformed by an unutterable sorrow.
Although Valentine has suffered -- her brother a heroin addict, her mother an unforgiven adulteress -- we are given the sense that she has called forth this emotion from outside -- it is borrowed, learned, used for theatrics, but perhaps without completely genuine content.
And in rushes forcefully another theme of the film: external, supernatural movements that intimately interact with the willed movements of the film's characters. An overarching wellspring of meaning and purpose -- a silent smiling whisper in which Valentine, Auguste, and the old judge participate without creating.
We humans can name sorrow, joy, fear, but we cannot know them in their full intensity at any given moment. We can, however, experience little hints of that memory of humanity, what some call the historical memory or collective memory. In my mind, this refers to God, who after all is one of us in a way none of us can be. He is more human than we are, and he is the origin of every sense. Because of this, I think, we have access to feelings that are not our own, access to at least an awareness of the depth of human feeling, desire -- due to our necessary and constant connection with him: complete dependence, our drawing of life from him. We draw everything from him.
Such a beauty illustrated in this film. The old judge reflects upon his life, his decline in sourness and cynicism grown from an experience of betrayal. And who grants him knowledge of this?
As a voyeur, he seeks knowledge to which he has no right. But none of it grants him any insight into his own condition. It is precisely through knowledge gratis that he is able to understand himself, and to love once more.
The beauty and love of the hint. God is a life-hack. I beseech you to give yourself to these films. God love you.
Irene Jacob on Rouge and Kieslowski:
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