Blogical Conclusion

BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE

JAN 9, 2010 – BEFITTING THE TITLE, THERE’S two of everything in this story of Weronika and Véronique (both played by Irène Jacob). To begin with, key motifs are repeated. When we first set eyes on Weronika, she’s a child in Poland, dangling upside down as she contemplates the night sky, which, of course, appears below land. Later, as an adult on a train, she views the countryside speeding past through a refractory glass, which turns the images upside down, the sky – yet again – appearing below land. Then there’s the instance of Weronika speaking over the phone while stationed in front of a mirror – there’s two of her now, the real and the reflected, and soon, there will, very literally, be two of her. As she steps outside and stops in front of a bus, she glimpses Véronique (a tourist from France, who’s boarding the bus) – both attired in the same red scarf, the same red gloves, the same dark overcoat.

The film opens with the voices of two mothers, who eventually recede into the background as two fathers take over raising Weronika and Véronique. Both women are found fidgeting with fastening material – a piece of string that holds a binder together in the case of Weronika, a shoelace in the case of Véronique. Both women slip and fall in the midst of crowds, both get mysterious presents, both gaze at the outside through distorted glass, both are musicians (Weronika is a soprano, Véronique a music teacher), both encounter stooped old women, both use a gold ring to cleanse their eyes – and yet, one aspect of their double lives isn’t doubled. Weronika suffers from a heart ailment but she perseveres with her full-throated singing, not bothering to consult a physician and paying for this oversight with her life, whereas the similarly afflicted Véronique goes to a cardiologist and gives up performing.

Why do Weronika and Véronique differ in this one – and only – significant respect? To get to that, we need to consider the scenes where both women confess to feeling psychically (or perhaps spiritually) connected. Weronika tells her father, “I have a strange feeling. I feel that I’m not alone… That I’m not alone in the world.” Much later, after Weronika’s demise, Véronique admits, “Not long ago, I had a strange sensation. I felt that I was alone. All of a sudden.” Her father intuits, “Someone disappeared from your life.” Véronique nods. “Yes, that’s it.” Apart from that single instance by the bus, Weronika and Véronique have never set eyes on each other, and even then, there was so much chaos around, with rioters and a fleeing public, that they might have shrugged off the sight of the other as an optical illusion. Still, they sense a strange connection to one another.

They are as mystified as we are – until Alexandre (Philippe Volter), a puppeteer, puts on a show at Véronique’s school. The story he narrates is hardly suitable for the young faces in the crowd, but it’s entirely appropriate to the themes of the film. A ballerina dies in the midst of a performance (like Weronika) and she, subsequently, transforms into a butterfly and rises to the heavens. Is Alexandre, therefore, a simple showman, a mere demonstrator of the director’s doppelganger conceit, or is he the great puppeteer in the sky, omniscient to the ways of His world and certainly wiser than we are about the invisible ties that bind Weronika and Véronique? Does He, in His infinite wisdom, sacrifice Weronika for the sake of Véronique’s well-being? Did Weronika, in other words, die so Véronique would learn to heed her heart and, accordingly, reconfigure her life?

It certainly appears so. Towards the end, Véronique approaches Alexandre, who’s at his table, crafting two puppets. “Is that me?” Véronique wonders, and Alexandre replies that it is. But Véronique, like us, is confused. “Why… Why two?” He answers, “Because during performances I handle them a lot. They damage easily.” And he narrates their story. “They were both born in two different cities on two different continents. They both had dark hair and brownish-green eyes. When they were both two years old and already knew how to walk, one of them burned her hand on a stove. A few days later the other one reached out to touch the stove, but pulled away just in time. And yet, she could not have known that she was about to burn herself.” There it is. Apparently, we’re all splintered souls, whispering to our doubles our hard-earned lessons so they can flit through life as blithely as butterflies.

La Double Vie de Véronique (1991, French, Polish, Italian; aka The Double Life of Veronique). Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Starring Irène Jacob, Philippe Volter, Wladyslaw Kowalski.

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