When the Judge Is Guilty

By RICHARD CORLISS

Storytellers are tyrants, masters of sadistic caprice. They invent a character, put him through hell, maybe kill him off -- ah, maybe not -- to make a moral point, or just because they feel like it. They resemblehanging judges, and sometimes they must feel uneasy about their power over life and death, love and loneliness. Perhaps that is what prodded Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski and his writing collaborator, Krzysztof Piesiewicz (himself a lawyer), to create Three Colors: Red, a movie about a judge racked by guilt, regret and his need to keep eavesdropping on other people's crimes and pain.

Decades ago, this Swiss judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) was obliged to determine the case of a defendant with whom he had a personal score to settle -- the accused had stolen the only woman the judge had ever loved. The judge passed sentence, then took to a life of electronic snooping on his neighbors. Into this lair of auditory voyeurism comes Valentine (Irene Jacob), a student and fashion model. Her passionate good nature stirs memories of that other young woman in the judge's life. He is touched, perhaps enough to end his sordid pastime.

Red is the final installment in the Kieslowski-Piesiewicz Blue, White and Red trilogy. The films treat the subjects of liberty, equality and fraternity in three different countries (France, Poland, Switzerland). Red was shot in Geneva, with a mostly Swiss cast, yet when the Swiss submitted the film for a foreign-language Oscar, the word came down that Red was ineligible -- guilty, apparently, of insufficient Swissness. The decision was stupid. Someone should tell the Motion Picture Academy that films are made by individuals, not by nations.

Many critics place Kieslowski at the very apex of modern filmmakers. That's wrong, but he certainly forces audiences to do something they are rarely asked to: look at movies. To name your film Red guarantees that the viewer will be as alert as a traffic cop to the color scheme -- to the red telephone, awning, sweater, and so on. Kieslowski has a fashion photographer's showy sense of pictorial alienation. He'll isolate Valentine (as in Valentine's Day, heart, red; get it?) in a corner of the film frame or pose her in an attitude of anxious ennui. It's the most literal-minded form of movie expressionism: meticulous, handsome, remote.

The style works nicely in Red. Visually and emotionally, this is the director's warmest film. At moments it glows, like the jacket of Valentine's absent lover; the garment's color is reflected in the young woman's face, suffusing her with long-distance affection. And as the friendship between her and the judge ripens into respect and something like love, the emotional crisis in the old man's life is replayed and miraculously resolved (we won't say how). Finally, the filmmakers concoct another miracle to unite the main characters from the trilogy's three episodes. That's the upside of narrative caprice: change your mind, wave a wand and everyone lives happily -- or, in Kieslowski's films, thoughtfully -- ever after.