Following ‘Blue’, ‘White’ is the second instalment of Kieslowski’s ‘Three Colours’ Trilogy of the French revolutionary ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
‘White’ stands for equality (and much else besides) in a droll tale of fortune reversed for which Kieslowski won Berlin’s Best Director award. ‘Three Colours White’ begins in Paris where Polish hairdresser Karol is really down on his luck: impotent, penniless, divorced by his glamorous wife. A lugubrious compatriot offers an unusual job and a means of returning home and Karol receives a rude introduction to the new Poland, where everything can be bought and sold. He swims with the tide, determines to become ‘more equal’ than others and plots his own form of revenge.