The Double Life of Véronique

Krzysztof Kieślowski's The Double Life of Véronique won Irène Jacob the Cannes Best Actress prize in 1991, between Kieślowski's Decalogue television cycle and his Three Colours trilogy. The film was the first Kieślowski feature with substantial international distribution; Jacob's performance, then unknown, made her career.

Two young women (Weronika in Kraków and Véronique in Paris) share the same face, the same musical gift, and an inexplicable sense of each other's existence. They meet, briefly, in Kraków, without recognising what they are seeing. Then Weronika dies on stage, and Véronique, half a continent away, feels the loss without knowing what has been lost. The remainder of the film follows Véronique as she begins to receive small mysterious objects from a Parisian puppeteer (Philippe Volter), and slowly assembles, half-consciously, an understanding of what has happened.

Sławomir Idziak's photography (saturated yellows and greens, gold-filter exteriors, mirror-shot interiors) is among the most distinctive of the 1990s. Zbigniew Preisner's score, including the soprano aria from the fictional composer Van den Budenmayer (Preisner's nom de plume), is foundational to the film's spell. The film operates closer to dream than to plot, and is widely considered one of the most genuinely metaphysical films ever made.

Why it's an Editor's Pick: Kieślowski's quietest masterwork, and the one that most patiently insists cinema can be a place of mystery rather than explanation. Jacob's central performance is one for the long memory.