I have been taking a “details matter” approach to “Three Colours: Red” so far, even more than I do normally. This is because I’m following Kieslowski’s lead. By the time he arrived at this movie, he was aware of his audience and understood that his fans enjoyed picking out the details of his scenes — so he’s packed this movie with little details and a plot that’s basically a series of Easter eggs. It’s his version of fan service. This section of the film is very dense. Even the dialogue has to be examined carefully, which is unusual for most of Kieslowski. The closest example I can think of is Dekalog 4, with the father/daughter conversations, where every word mattered.

So, as I mentioned in the last segment, it closed with Valentine rushing away from the judge’s neighbors house, nearly tripping as she walked away, then quickly leaving the area, with the judge watching her go. There’s a bit of a time jump involved in the next shot, it must be watched carefully. As Valentine is walking away, we see the red Jeep of her neighbor. This would make you believe that the edit returns her to her neighborhood, but that’s not the case — the man with the Jeep’s girlfriend gets out here and kisses him goodbye, he says that he will call her later. We learn at this moment that she lives in the judge’s neighborhood.

Immediately, we see Valentine walking back to the judge’s house. But this does not happen right away, and we know this because we will soon overhear the man with the Jeep calling his girlfriend and he clearly has not had enough time to drive home if Valentine went straight into the judge’s house. It isn’t something we’d immediately consider today because of cell phones, but in the early 90s when this movie was made, you had to be home to make a call. Therefore, Kieslowski is playing with time a bit … imagine that this scene is happening a couple hours later.

She rushes into the judge’s house without ringing anything this time. As she enters his main room — what I’ll call his chamber, just because he seems to be treating it like a judge’s chamber — he tells Valentine that she dropped her newspaper on the way out. Now, Kieslowski does a plot extrapolation here … we are to infer that the judge saw the newspaper, looked at it and determined that it was important enough for Valentine to carry around, then determined that the cover story had meaning to her and it was her brother in the scene. In a previous scene, he said it was easy to find out where to send her money, so who knows, maybe his snooping activities are more extensive than he’s letting on.

The judge fetches a tea kettle off the stove and walks back into the room. He asks if Valentine told anyone about the eavesdropping. She says no. He absentmindedly tips the kettle a bit and some water pours out, he quickly catches himself. But then Valentine says she came back because she needed to ask him to stop his eavesdropping. He pours water out of the kettle onto the floor voluntarily this time. He responds “I’ve done it all my life,” indicating it is not something he’s inclined to ever give up — or perhaps he couldn’t even if he wanted to.

He walks back into the kitchen. Valentine follows him in there. We see her reflection in two different panes of glass, one after another, recalling all of the reflections from “The Double Life of Veronique” and giving, perhaps, a Kieslowski hint that she is the triple life. As she gets to the kitchen she asks him “what were you … were you a cop?” He replies: “worse. A judge.” She kneels down by a table, the Van Den Budenmeyer record still sitting on the table. He snaps a suspender he is wearing and says “would you like to try this? It makes a very nice sound.” She turns her head away from him as he says this — towards the record, as if “very nice sound” propels her towards the music that ties all of the Kieslowski moral universe pieces together.

He says next that on the bench, he had no idea if he was on the right side of the matter. But at least with his electronic eavesdropping, he thinks he has an honest understanding of things that are happening. Valentine disputes this and tells him that people have a right to their secrets. The judge agrees, but then asked, what kept you from telling about his activities? Was it his kind, adoring wife? Was it the young girl who could be torn apart by family strife? He asks if she was seized by remorse or unwilling to do harm? Valentine replies: perhaps both.

The judge edges closer to Valentine and tells her that it doesn’t matter if he eavesdrops on the husband or not, eventually he will jump out the window or his wife will find out everything. The daughter will find out the truth and their lives will be destroyed. None of that can be prevented. He then asks her, does this remind you of something? She says yes. He asks her to say what it is it reminds her of … she says a boy she knows. The judge says … a boy who what … just discovered that his mother “is a whore?” This is a disturbing thing for the judge to say, why does he?

Valentine is not shocked or put off by his comment. Instead, she adds “who found out … he wasn’t his father’s son.” While watching this scene, we cannot know what the judge or Valentine is talking about. The boy in question is her brother (or half brother.) So apparently the thing that drove him onto the streets where he has become a heroin addict is the understanding that his father is someone other than the man he called father up to that point in his life — again, an echo of Dekalog 4.

Valentine adds that her brother found out when he was 15, then points at the judge and says “that little girl, she knows too.” The music becomes very dramatic at this point and the judge asks her to stay a minute. She asks why — because the light in the room is about to become beautiful. At this stage of the day, a ray of light streams into the room, creating a beautiful warm light. As the light spreads, a phone call can be heard. On one end of the phone is the woman offering personalized weather reports — the girlfriend of the man with the red Jeep. She gives weather for a woman driving to a ski resort the next day. The judge says that he likes hearing these calls because he gets to know the weather all across Europe. Oh, the things we had to do before the Internet.

The sun now peeks away, ending the warm glow, and another call comes in. The judge anticipates who this will be. It is the man in the red Jeep calling his beloved. Valentine listens to the beginning of the call, but as their talk grows intimate, she covers her ears. The judge keeps listening, of course. The young man expresses some concern about being younger than her and some anxiety about his upcoming law exams. She proposes a coin flip — heads he keeps studying, tales he goes out bowling with her. The judge takes out his own coin and does his own flip. His comes up tails … as does the young woman’s. They agree to meet later.

Valentine tells him that she didn’t listen, he tells her it’s too bad, it was romantic, she adds that she did hear the beginning and offers up the thought that they are in love. The judge sighs … yes … but he hasn’t met the right woman yet. We get the sense that the judge feels a special kinship with this young man. I developed a theory after a couple viewings of this movie that maybe the judge literally was this young man, that there was a form of time travel taking place in the movie. This is not explicitly, literally the case, but as a form of metaphor, it is true. The judge is empathetically connected to him. He says he knows this because he sometimes observes the couple out of his window.

The scene continues from here, but this is a good place to stop. Much has already happened in this scene and there will be another dramatic shift as we begin the next essay.