Simply ‘Red’

Simply ‘Red’

Jacob contributes personal color to new foreign film

By Lael Loewenstein

Daily Bruin Staff

Irène Jacob is sitting on the couch in her suite in the
Westwood Marquis. Slim and petite, she wears a cherry-colored
sweater over a black skirt, an appropriate choice to promote her
new film, Red.

In person, Jacob, 28, bears no trace of the melancholy she
embodies as Red’s heroine Valentine. The new release from Polish
director Krzysztof Kieslowski and the final film in his Three
Colors trilogy, Red has been warmly praised by critics, some of
whom have suggested that in Jacob the director has found his
muse.

Red is Jacob’s second film with Kieslowski, and their
collaboration has been fruitful. Their first film together, The
Double Life of Veronique (1991), garnered critical laurels and a
Cannes Film Festival Best Actress prize for Jacob.

Part of that success, explains Jacob, comes from the director’s
willingness to accept his actors’ ideas. "When I read the first
treatment, Valentine was a model, she was happy," she says in a
gentle French accent.

"I thought, maybe we should find a something unsatisfying about
her, so she has a longing to meet someone." Kieslowski agreed, and
her suggestion was fortuitous. When Valentine inadvertently meets
an older, retired judge, as lonely and isolated as she is, their
building friendship takes on a resonance that the earlier draft
would have lacked.

As the emotional core of Red, the conversations between
Valentine and the judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) slowly develop
tension only to break it down later. Kieslowski carefully coached
his actors in rehearsal.

"Krzysztof would crouch near Jean-Louis and me, watching first
one then the other, finding out where the tension was, what was at
stake," she recalls. "He can adopt an idea at the last minute and
transform it."

Another idea the director adopted involved the last shot in the
film, in which all the characters from Blue, White and Red come
together. In reality, that scene was shot after the director had
finished Blue, the first film in the trilogy, and long before
shooting on Red got underway. The final image of Red is a
freeze-frame on Jacob’s face in profile.

Sensing the power in that image, a sort of startled, faraway
look, the director of photography suggested using that same shot
for a chewing gum advertisement for which Valentine had posed for
weeks earlier. Kieslowski agreed, and that image of Valentine came
to take on a deeper, almost eerie meaning in the film. That same
image is now the advertisement for Red.

Speaking about Red, Jacob demonstrates a passionate
understanding of the director’s intentions. "At the beginning of
the film you don’t know much about my character or the story," she
says. "You think, ‘what is this film about?’ But then she has this
confrontation with the judge, and she is surprised to be so
provoked by someone she had really nothing to with."

Although Valentine is at first repelled by the judge, she
returns to speak to him and eventually comes to trust him. "She
starts to like the judge when he opens himself to her, he gives her
something. It’s the first time someone has done this with her,"
Jacob says. "And she finds that she reveals herself to him as
well."

Is Valentine anything like Irène Jacob? She pauses before
answering. "Well, she is supposed to be something like all of
us.

"This film is a dialogue between the youthful part of ourselves
that hopes, that expects things, that believes in things, which is
Valentine, and the part of us that experiences pain, disappointment
in our hopes, betrayal and cynicism, which is the judge," Jacob
says. "I think we are supposed to recognize ourselves in Valentine
and in the judge as well."

In Red, the judge is closely mirrored in a young man, a judge
himself, who seems a perfect companion for Valentine but whom she
keeps missing.

Although Kieslowski has found a successful collaboration with
Jacob, he is not the only director to have discovered her talents.
She made her first film, Au Revoir Les Enfants, with Louis Malle,
and she has worked with Jacques Rivette in La Band des Quatre.

"The experience of finding good directors, good scripts, is very
lucky for an actor, because we don’t do this profession alone. We
are dependent on successful collaboration," she says.

Jacob, who is Swiss, now lives in Paris. She has worked outside
of western Europe, recently completing All Men Are Mortal in
Budapest opposite Stephen Rea, and Victory with Sam Neill and
Willem Dafoe in Malaysia.

"I think it’s very interesting to confront different cultures,"
she says. "I enjoy this very much." Her next project is A Bee In
the Clouds, one of a series of five short films directed by Wim
Wenders and Michelangelo Antonioni.

Although she stands on the brink of international fame, Jacob
has little desire to work in Hollywood.

"Hollywood as a concept doesn’t mean so much to me. I involve
myself with a script, with a director, if the film seems right. I
choose my work because of the project, not because of a certain
amount of money."

That distinctly European attitude toward filmmaking has guided
Jacob toward the right projects so far. If she continues to follow
her instincts, this striking young actress will have a long and
fertile career ahead. It’s a good bet that Red is just one of many
colors in her palette.