Three Colours: White
Movie, 1994, Named by the director, Set in Second in the trilogy
Three Colours: White is #19 of 48 in release order and #20 of 48 in chronological order in the Spiritual Trilogies.
The story
Polish immigrant Karol Karol finds himself out of a marriage, a job and a country when his French wife, Dominique, divorces him after six months due to his impotence. Forced to leave France after losing the business they jointly owned, Karol enlists fellow Polish expatriate Mikołaj to smuggle him back to their homeland.
Three Colours: White recap
Karol Karol, a Polish hairdresser in Paris, is divorced by his French wife Dominique because he has been unable to consummate the marriage. He loses the salon, his money and his passport, and when she frames him for setting the salon on fire he ends up busking in the Metro. There he meets Mikolaj, a Pole who smuggles him home inside a suitcase. Thieves at the Warsaw airport steal the case, beat Karol and dump him on a rubbish tip. He returns to his brother Jurek's salon, then takes a job guarding a currency exchange and learns his employers are buying up land a company plans to develop; he buys the plots first and gets rich. Mikolaj had asked Karol to kill a man who wants to die. The man is Mikolaj himself, and Karol fires a blank at him, after which he decides to live and becomes Karol's partner. White, for equality, is the comic middle film of Kieślowski's Three Colours Trilogy.
Three Colours: White ending explained
Karol fakes his death, Dominique is jailed for his murder, and the two seem to love each other again. Karol leaves his fortune to Dominique and stages his funeral with a corpse bought for the purpose. She comes to Warsaw, finds him alive in her hotel room, and this time they sleep together successfully. In the morning he is gone and the police arrest her. Karol later stands below her prison window. She sees him and signs that she will marry him again when she is free, and he cries.
Post-credits scenes
No. There is no post-credits scene.
Where to watch Three Colours: White
Three Colours: White is streaming on TCM and HBO Max in the US. You can rent or buy it on Amazon, Apple TV, and Fandango At Home.
Ratings
IMDb 7.6/10, Rotten Tomatoes 91%
Where it fits
- Release order: after In the Mouth of Madness, before Three Colours: Red.
- Chronological order: after Three Colours: Blue, before Three Colours: Red.
Cast
- Zbigniew Zamachowski as Karol Karol
- Julie Delpy as Dominique
- Janusz Gajos as Mikołaj
- Jerzy Stuhr as Jurek
- Grzegorz Warchoł as Elegant
- Jerzy Nowak as Old Peasant
- Aleksander Bardini as Notary
- Cezary Harasimowicz as Inspector
- Jerzy Trela as Monsieur Bronek
- Cezary Pazura as Exchange Office Owner
- Michel Lisowski as Interpreter
- Piotr Machalica as Man under the Exchange Office
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski.