Author: Siqi Guan, a BA Filmmaking student, interested in Directing.
The Double Life of Veronique tells the story of two young girls, one was born in Poland and the other was born in France. They have the same face, the same age, the same love of music, and the singing voice, they even have the same name. they are all called Veronique. Veronique from Poland loves to sing, and she has made a lot of efforts in order to perform. She often feels that she is not alone in the world. One day she finally saw a girl in bus that looked exactly like herself, but not long after that, she suffered a heart attack and died on the stage during a performance. At this time, the French Veronique, who was having fun with her boyfriend, suddenly felt a turbulent emptiness and sadness. Since then, she can often hear a very sad tune in her life. She gave up her singing job and became a music teacher in school, she fell in love with the puppeteer while once watching a puppet show, at the same time, the puppeteer is also a children's book writer. Once in the process of chatting with her boyfriend, she found that one of the photos she took in Poland has a girl was exactly the same as herself. At this time, she discovered that the other Veronique existence in the world.
The film director Krzysztof Kieslowski was born in Poland and studied at the film academy founded by the pioneer artist at the time. His graduation work was a documentary. From then on, he embarked on the path of making documentaries. But after he filmed more documentaries, he discovered the limitations of documentaries. The limitations of human beings in front of the camera created an insurmountable gap between documentaries and real life. So after he had made documentaries for more than ten years, Kieslowski turned to the field of feature films with more space to create.
In 1989 Krzysztof Kieslowski moved to France, but in fact he first came to Paris when he was filming The Double Life of Veronique. The film was first shot in Poland and then in Kleiman Feron. Later, he arrived in Paris. For Kieslowski at that time, it was just another shooting location. Slowly, after the filming, he continued to stay in Paris because he had to participate in the subsequent editing work to complete the film. An embarrassing thing happened at that time. The editor didn’t speak English, and Kieslowski didn’t speak French. So even in the editing of such an intimate thing, they needed an interpreter. That’s it. This kind of editing relationship lasted three months (Kieslowski et al., 2000).
The Double Life of Veronique is a typical female film, because at previous the director Kieslowski was often criticized by film critics when he was in Poland. They said that Kieslowski portrayed women as single-dimensional characters and did not understand the essence of women. He made up his mind to complete a female film. But the actual situation is much more difficult (Kieslowski et al., 2000). For example, the name of the film. The producer asked Kieslowski to name the film as soon as possible. Because of the language and cultural differences between Poland and France, he prepared many names but none of them were satisfactory. Finally, before the deadline specified by the producer, he decided to give the film the name The Double Life of Veronique because the name doesn’t sound so bad in Polish, French and English, but actually, both Kieslowski and the producers don't like it that much.
Similarly, Kieslowski also encountered difficulties in selecting actresses. The two Veronique in the film are both played by the film rookie Irene Jacob, who studied Polish specifically for the film and won the best actress at the 44th Cannes Film Festival. But Kieslowski wanted to give the role to Andie MacDowell at first, because he liked her performance in Sex, Lies, and Videotape (Insdorf & Jacob, 2008).
Kieslowski liked Andie very much, and the latter was also interested in this film, and the contract was ready for signing. But Kieslowski’s inexperienced producer at the time had ignored the contract. The producer thought that everyone only had to fulfill the verbal promises, but in fact no one cared about the verbal promises. Later, a big film studio inviting Andie to act in a movie, her agent immediately agreed-Americans acted in American movies, which was a matter of course. Although they were sad, they immediately began to look for other actresses, later, they discovered Irene, a young girl who was more like a "girl" than Andie. At the same time, she was a French who grew up in Switzerland and was fluent in French (Kieslowski et al., 2000).
It is worth to say that Kieslowski added an ending to the American audience after the film premiered in the United States at the New York Film Festival, that is, we saw Veronique hugging her father from the window. Kieslowski's own explanation for this is that this change is to make the end of the film more clear and understandable. He said that there was even a stage where they thought about making as many versions of The Double Life of Veronique in as many theaters as possible. For example, in the United States, the movie will be shown in 20 theaters, and then make 20 versions that have slightly different between each other. Which sounds crazy! However, this is also a manifestation of commercialism and a means to attract audiences to watch the film in different theaters. Although this idea has not been practiced, the film performed well in the United States and made a lot of money (Kieslowski et al., 2000).
In conclusion, from all levels, t The Double Life of Veronique is the most beautiful and poetic interpretation of human nature and destiny.
Reference List:
Insdorf, A., & Jacob, I. (2008). Double lives, second chances.
Kieslowski, K., STOK, D., & Sicoie, F. (2000). Kieslowski despre Kieslowski.
Zhao, H. (2012). Director Kieslowski's spiritual world. Daguan Weekly, 567(7), 14,23.
