This is the heart of the movie and perhaps the entire “Three Colours” trilogy. Joseph and Valentine are still talking inside the theater where the fashion show took place. He says that he used to come to this theater often and sat in the loge section, where he was for the fashion show as well, which is why she couldn’t see him.

He recounts an experience from law school. He was sitting in the loge section with his school books. One of them fell down into the orchestra pit. He raced down to retrieve it. It opened to a page that he read — and later, he discovered that a question from his exam covered the same question. This is the same experience Auguste had earlier in the film, another odd synchronicity between those characters. Valentine is enjoying Joseph’s relaxed openness and remarks that getting him out of the house has done him some good — he agrees, saying it has recharged his battery.

Before I go on with the conversation, I need to mention the atmospheric digressions that take place during this scene. There is a storm that blows through, which leads Valentine to rush around closing a bunch of doors. Strange that she has to do this, but I guess no one else is around or able to do it. This storm is a foreshadow of the surprise storm on the English Channel that closes the film (and the series) in the next segment.

There is also a brief digression of a theater worker who asks if they’ve seen “a woman with buckets” that interrupts the conversation twice, but doesn’t seem to add anything to the story. Kieslowski probably just wanted to give his audience a breather from this very long discussion between Valentine and Joseph.

Back to their conversation, recall in the last segment that Valentine had ascribed some supernatural abilities to Joseph to know things about her. But as they two are now seated (quite unusually apart from one another) drinking coffee in the orchestra pit after Valentine had closed the theater doors, she intuits something important about him — she asked why he told her the story about the sailor when there is a more important story, one about a woman who betrayed him, that he is holding back?

Joseph asks how she knows this, and she replies with the same line he earlier used on her — “it wasn’t hard to figure out.” Joseph goes on to describe a girlfriend he had in college, someone whose physical description sounds a lot like Julie Delpy from “White” (it’s not her, just another psychic crossed wire in Kieslowski’s story telling) who he witnessed via a mirror having sex with another man (oddly enough, this image would later be used by Ryusuke Hasagawa in “Drive My Car” — was it an homage?)

Joseph says he was devastated by the betrayal and says he “followed them” across France and the English Channel. Does this mean he stalked them in some sense? He says that the woman in question died in a car accident. But the man, named Hugo Hobling, later came before his court on a case where he was being charged with negligence for a construction project that when awry and led to people dying.

Valentine rightly points out that he should have recused himself. Joseph admits that he was deeply biased and would have killed the man himself if he thought it would make any difference. He found him guilty — what he called a perfectly legal decision — and then resigned from the bench.

He then says that he never was with another woman after this betrayal, that he loved her for many years. This is, at the same time, romantic and sad and … in my view … kind of ridiculous. You experience one heartbreak in life and then check out? Anyway, it’s an opportunity for him to say that he never met the right woman — and added, he never met Valentine.

Well, at least he’s not using this as an opportunity to hit on her, just an acknowledgment that she’s the type of woman he’s been hoping to discover.

They leave the theater and are at his car outside, it is no longer raining. Joseph gives Valentine a bottle of pear brandy as a gift. She says that she’ll be gone for a few weeks, but wants to see him again when she gets back, she would like to take one of Rita’s puppies. Joseph then asks if the fashion show will be on TV, Valentine says probably yes. He says he will need to get a TV, and Valentine offers to give him one she doesn’t use — she says her brother will bring it by. The judge says he would be happy to meet him.

Before he leaves, Joseph asks to see her ferry ticket. He looks at the red ticket briefly and hands it back. I’m not sure what he was looking for … maybe Kieslowski saw this as one more opportunity to flash some red onscreen.

So now we head into the series conclusion … one that Kieslowski at first envisioned as an elaborate effects-filled spectacle to close “Three Colours.” Always looking to make his movies as inexpensively as possible, he eventually settled on a far more economical and simple approach.

No one complains about it. The finale of “Three Colours: Red” is among the best movie endings ever.