Trzy kolory: Biały

I don't know if the movies Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors trilogy made it to my neck of the woods on original release; they were probably in one of the art theaters but I never saw them. Some time back I saw Three Colors: Blue when it was a TCM Import or maybe on one of the premium channels' free preview weekends. Then, a few months back, TCM ran Three Colors: White, so I recorded that in order to finally be able to watch it and do a review of it.

Karol Karol is a Polish barber who emigrated to Paris not long after the Communist regime fell in 1939, and married a French woman, Dominique (Julie Delpy). However, due to his impotence, he was incapable of consummating the marriage and, as a result, Dominique has filed for divorce. This being a French court and Karol not speaking French very well, the court sides with her, giving her everything and leaving Karol destitute and with no means of supporting himself.

Now, you'd think the court would just have Karol deported back to Poland, but for some reason he's not put on a plane and immediately sent back to Warsaw. Instea, he becomes a beggar in the Paris Metro which is where he meets fellow Pole Mikołaj. Mikołaj smuggles him back to Poland, but things go awry and Karol winds up in the middle of nowhere beaten by men who thought they were getting something valuable in the suitcase that actually held the smuggled Karol.

Karol goes back to work with his brother as a hair stylist, but takes a second job working for a black-market money exchanger, this being the early 1990s when all of the former Iron Curtain countries had a sort of Wild West feel to them, Karol is no dummy, eavesdropping on his bosses and realizing that they've got a plan to purchase a bunch of land where some of the new money is planning on developing it, the bosses' plans being to resell that land to the developers at a huge profit. Instead, Karol goes out and buys the land himself, foiling his bosss' plans.

Having discovered that he's able to function the the shady underside of the economy, Karol sets about getting his ultimate satisfaction: revenge on poor Dominique. To do this, Karol has to figure out a way to get Dominique to come to Poland to see him. The plan is that, when Dominique is in Poland, Karol is going to fake his own death, with a will having everything go to Dominique which will get the Polish authorities to believe Dominique murdered Karol. Now, you'd think it would be hard to prove murder without a body, but that's just one of the many plot holes in Three Colors: White.

I can see why a lot of people would like Three Colors: White and give it high scores, but I have to admit that I had difficulty seeing past all those plot holes that made me feel like there's no way any of this could have happened in real life. So Three Colors: White is definitely one of those movies that you're going to need to watch and judge for yourself.