The second film of the Three Colours trilogy is built around the French democratic concept of egalite — or equality. Kieslowski in interviews argued that as much as we talk about equality, no one actually wants it. We always desire to prove ourselves better than others, and often this takes the form of domination and cruelty.

“White” is built around a simple comic conceit that plays out before the action of the film and is never directly spelled out, even though it’s fairly easy to piece together. Karol was a renowned hair stylist in Warsaw, someone who had won international prizes We don’t know why the beautiful French woman Dominique was in Warsaw, but given her beautiful blonde hair, it wouldn’t be surprising if hair brought them together and Karol’s artistry captivated her. The two met and fell in love. They moved to Paris, where they were soon married. Then, for unexplained reasons, Karol lost his sexual potency.

This is a topic Kieslowski has covered before in Dekalog 9, but here the basis of Karol’s impotence isn’t something physical. In Paris, he simply feels like less of a man. He’s lower on the cultural totem pole. He’s no longer renowned for his work. He doesn’t dress as well as Parisian men. He doesn’t know the language. He’s basically a stand-in for every Eastern European after the fall of the wall — now part of Europe, but considered by the European elite (and who exemplifies that elite better than Parisians?) as lesser brothers and sisters.

So as we begin this segment, Karol is in a Parisian courtroom, where his wife Dominique (and what a great name, it whispers dominance from the start) is suing him for divorce. The French divorce laws seem completely strange, but to be honest, every courtroom drama that takes place in France seems odd to me, their system is nothing like U.S. justice. Here we see a judge ask Dominique the grounds for her divorce and she states plainly that the marriage was never consummated.

Dominique is played by the wonderful Julie Delpy. For some reason, “Three Colours: White” did not get a wide release in the United States, so like most viewers of the trilogy, I saw both “Blue” and “Red” before catching up with this one years later. I had assumed for many years that this movie came out after “Before Sunrise,” the romantic dramedy with Ethan Hawke that made Delpy an international star. But this was not the case, that movie actually came out a year later, making this Delpy’s first prominent global role (she was featured on most of the movie poster’s worldwide even though her speaking role was relatively small.)

Delpy met Kieslowski a couple years before “White.” She was introduced to him by Polish director Agnieszka Holland, who had cast Delpy in her film “Europa Europa” when she was only 17. Kieslowski asked Delpy to audition for “The Double Life of Veronique” but in the audition he asked her to make a sexy face, and she refused, putting her finger in her ear instead. She believes this cost her the role. But shortly afterwards, Kieslowski asked if she would be interested in a role in “Three Colours: Blue.” She said that she did not relate to the film or the role and turned him down, but was later offered the role in “White” without an audition.

Kieslowski would go on to become a mentor to Delpy, helping her receive screenwriting and directing training at a very young age — training that paid off, because Delpy went on to be a full collaborator with director Richard Linklater in the “Before” trilogy, co-writing the scripts to “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight” and earning Oscar nominations for both.

Delpy accepted this role in “White” because she loved the film, even if she thought her character was “a bitch.” While I steer clear of that word, I would describe Dominique as cruel. Every relationship is a series of letdowns and challenges. Getting over the ideal image of another person is part of what love is all about. So for Dominique to face the first crisis of their marriage — Karol’s difficulty fitting into Parisian culture and losing his sexual potency — with immediate divorce shows tremendous immaturity on her part. She has every right to be angry about what is happening, but to drag her husband to court and “win” under French law, bringing her husband’s sexual issues into the open, is humiliation. It is not unusual for people to create triangulation scenarios, where they draw in another person to make it easier to drop the difficult words they couldn’t say face to face, but to turn all of Paris into one corner of that triangle is horrific.

And that’s basically what happens in this scene. Delpy explains to the judge that their marriage has not be consummated, through an interpreter Karol adds the detail that they had sex before marriage, but it’s true he hasn’t been able to … he adds a detail that one night he thought he could … but the judge interrupts him to get to the facts, did he have sex with Dominique or not? The answer sends him out defeated.

Kieslowski told Delpy not to try to understand Dominique, because people often do not know why they behave the way they do. Instead, focus on her physicality, define her through gestures. And so the scene ends with Delpy dropping at Karol’s feet a big crate — that same one we saw on the carousel at CDG — declaring “that’s everything,” then giving him a back handed wave before driving off.

Dominique has already defeated Karol. But she’s not done yet.