Kieslowski opened all three movies of his “Three Colours” trilogy with a cross cut of dramatic action and a scene of modern technology. In this film, that technology is the airport baggage system and the conveyor belts that take passenger luggage from the airport to the plane cargo hold. The movie begins with a shot of a rather larger crate working its way through the Charles De Gaulle airport baggage system in Paris. We are given no clue of the bag’s significance as we see it — but we will understand the flash forward in roughly 23 minutes of film time.

As should be apparent by now, Kieslowski likes to reward close attention to details. He doesn’t expect you to understand things as you see them, but hopes these objects will imprint themselves on your memory and take up greater resonance later on.

Three Colours: White stars Zbigniew Zamachowski as Karol Karol, not exactly an international star at the time — and certainly not someone well known now — but for Kieslowski fans, he was immediately recognizable as the lovable punk rock brother Artur from Dekalog 10. To drive home the connection to that episode, we will later discover that Karol Karol’s brother is played by Jerzy Stuhr, the same actor who played his brother in Dekalog 10. There are numerous other Dekalog actors who will be seen throughout the film, and they all feel like old friends to me now, so I’m looking forward to their entrances.

We first witness Karol Karol walking briskly on a Paris street. He is clearly not Parisian. He’s wearing a drab olive colored trench coat, a grey suit, burgundy sweater vest, red paisley tie, ill fitting shirt … and unlike the long-haired Artur from Dekalog 10, Karol appears pudgy, a little too grown up for his boyishness. He seems to miss the long hair from his double Artur (I hadn’t considered the possibility of a Double Life of Karol Karol … but keep it tucked away.) He seems to pass several happy couples as he walks, one of them embraced in a kiss. And then he comes upon a very official looking building.

This is, in fact, the same courthouse where we saw Julie search for her late husband’s lover in “Three Colours: Blue,” and not only will we look for Dekalog actors in this movie, we will see some of Blue’s characters in the early scenes. Karol Karol, struggling with French, asks a guard where he goes with his summons, and he is told this is the right building, go inside.

We briefly see the large suitcase moving across the conveyor belts again, then back to Karol, who is still outside the building, checking his watch. He starts to climb the stairs. He gets to a flock of pigeons who fly off. He stops on the step to notice the bird flying off, smiles briefly, then gets dropped on by the bird. Humiliation will be a continuing theme of this story, and Karol now has to wipe the bird crap off his coat.

It’s back to the crate, plaintive music playing behind it. Karol is now inside, trying to glean information from the summons to see where he needs to go. He is surrounded by people in French judicial garb. He decides to take off his coat and moves on.

It’s not a terribly dramatic opening for a film. At this point we don’t know who this man is or why he has been summoned to a courtroom. But we do know that he doesn’t seem to belong. He’s struggling with the language. He is trying to dress the part, but doesn’t quite fit in. Even the Parisian birds are having the best of him. Karol Karol simply does not belong in Paris.

And what about that crate, moving through CDG? What does it say about his future?