8 because of beautiful shots, but otherwise too "meditative" for my taste

Lives of two women connected by an inexplicable bond, beautiful and poetic.

I am still processing this movie and its multiple layers of storytelling. I was a big fan of Kieslowski's three colors but never got a chance to watch Veronique. I was very impressed by the simplicity and complexity of this human drama. Irene Jacob was simply stunning and exceptional.

To fully enjoy The Double Life of Veronique, dispense with the idea that the plot is important to sort out. It isn't. Weronika (Irene Jacob) is a Polish woman who strives to be a great singer. Veronique (also Jacob) is a Parisian who is also drawn to music and shares an existential angst with her Polish counterpart. While the closest the two ever come to meeting is the shared experience of a violent protest in Krakow, they both understand intuitively that the other exists. Director Krzysztof Kieslowski creates a mesmerizing, ethereal, somewhat surreal viewing experience that is as visually stunning as anything he (or anyone else, for that matter) has produced. Throw logic out the window and allow the movie to wash over you as the two characters try to come terms with the fact that they are not alone in the world.

This movie is a masterpiece. The plot is also interesting even-though there is not much suspense in it. The direction of Krzysztof Kieślowski and the ending is also magnificent. The cinematography of the film is state of the art for the 90s era. In addition, the title of the film is also relevant to the whole plot

In the world of Weronika and Véronique, lives are not limited to what we can smell, taste, see, and touch. Instead, existence is a tangle of invisible threads, linking people together in unexpected ways and implying an inherent 'unknowability' to the world around us. Dripping with a slow and dreamlike atmosphere (and a yellow tinge that makes you wonder if this is actually an American movie depicting Mexico), The Double Life of Véronique is consistently melancholy (depicting a series of characters that are tied closely, that indirectly benefit and suffer from each others' experiences, and that are destined never to meet), but shows a candid, romantic sensitivity that hints at deeper connections and a greater impact to our lives than perhaps we give ourselves credit for. Kieślowski delivers the careful arrangement and attention to detail of a true auteur in this film, which is rightly considered an arthouse masterpiece, deliviering profound insights through beautiful visuals that require little in the way of studio cash or A-list acting name recognition. (4.5/5)

It should be named as "Quantum Veronique".

Wow, beautiful how the opening panning landscape shot is upside down, and during sunset. I don't think I've seen a movie begin upside down. What a cute little girl. Now I see why the frame is upside down, the girl was looking out the window upside down. Wow the colors look amazing in this movie. The color palettes in this movie are incredibly beautiful. Wow this movie's so beautiful. The way it's shot gives it this almost dream-like quality tat is mesmerizing to watch. That kissing scene in the alley was hot lol. Really sweet and passionate. The actress who plays the main female character is very cute, very pretty. There's this very curious beauty about her, she's very lovely. There was something so strangely familiar feeling and cozy about that scene with her and her Papa. And then the beautiful classical music in the background just elevates that scene even more. WTF?!? Her auntie's lawyer is a dwarf! Lol, I didn't see that coming. That was so delightfully surprising. Dude wtf?! She has a twin sister or something? Or a doppelgänger? Dude WTF?!?! What a fucking creep that older guy walking around town flashing his junk at Weronika. Lol wtf was that all about? That was so random. Wow, that piece of music that she performs for the first time on stage with the orchestra was hauntingly beautiful. Ominous but beautiful. Wait… WHAT?! She's dead?! No way. I refuse to believe she's dead. That was so sudden and shocking. Wow, the most amazing performance she's ever given killed her. That's so fucking darkly tragic. She finally gets a shot at doing something she loves, something that's greater than her, and she fucking dies. At least she died doing what she was passionate about. I believe there's this sixth sense that we can all tap in to. I think this is what Veronique experienced right after having sex. The sadness that consumed her was the realization that a piece of her or in fact the other half of her has died. That marionette performance was dazzling to watch, so mesmerizing. It wasn't till the end that I realized the whole performance was a reflection of what had happened to Weronika. The marionette doll was a ballet dancer, died at the end doing what she loved and then was reborn as a butterfly. I wonder if the man who was puppeteering the marionettes is supposed to symbolize death, or a new beginning. There's all these ominous tones and omens throughout the movie. Like the shot of the graveyard right before she finds herself at her coworkers house. Reminds me of Don't Look Now in that regard. I feel like this coworker of her's that's getting her involved in the court case against Alexandre, the puppeteer and children's book author, is going to end up either getting her in trouble or getting her killed. I don't like it, and I don't like her one bit. If I were Veronique, I just wouldn't get involved. That whole cassette recording was trippy as hell. I don't know what to make of it. She puts her hand on the tree at her father's house and then cuts to her father milling and can sense that she's there. The last part of the movie kind of lost me, I found it disappointing. I think I was expecting a different ending. I guess I was expecting a more grounded and resolute ending - an answer. I should've known better since the whole movie is about asking question and intuition instead of answers. There's some things we cannot explain in life that are higher than our realm of senses and we just have to accept that. I was also expecting it become a thriller/horror movie similar to Brian De Palma. What the hell was I thinking?! Lmao. My only hope is that Veronique doesn't get serious with Alexandre. Incredibly dream-like and gorgeously filmed. Unexpectedly funny at times and mysteriously entrancing. Filled with beautiful symbolism. Truly unique and remarkable, unlike anything I've ever seen. All the green, yellow and orange lighting throughout the movie really gives it this almost surreal and dream-like quality to the film. At the same time, the movie unearths some very philosophical, spiritual and life-questioning questions. I'd like to watch it again sometime. Maybe I'll have a different outlook on the ending next time.

1001 movies to see before you die. An interesting film. Slow, but beautiful. Great acting. A little odd, but good nonetheless. Saw it on TCM.

For me Kieslowski is one of the greatest, his films do not have the same analytical philosophising of the human condition of Bergman but they are greatly aesthetic, they are works of art. The Double Life... is a film about life, beauty and ultimately love. From the opening scenes of the little girls being shown the beauty of nature the whole thing becomes instantly a world of beauty and serene loveliness throughout. Right away we get the scenes of Weronika singing so beautifully and the rain starts to fall but instead of running for cover she continues and just feels and enjoys the feeling of rain on her face and straight afterwards becomes overwhelmed with love and passion in the darkened passageway, pure intensified life, love for life and this remained the theme for the whole film. We know its a film, we know they are actors, we know it's not really true and it doesn't matter if it could be or not, the question is not relevant, and none of it matters any more than knowing Mona Lisa was just sitting posing for a portrait, the art is still beautiful. The beauty of the singing, the fresh faced playfulness and happiness of youth, all the green mood lighting which one does not even consider in the context of reality, only as something aesthetically wonderful - not effected and shallowly showy like Blade Runner 2041. Kieslowski must have a lot of integrity as a filmaker. Kieslowski's films often have some higher, even spiritual, element to them and this is no exception but it doesn't matter at all that it isn't mentioned or explained in words, to do so would be to ruin it anyway. This is his first French film and I can see why he switched. His Polish films are also wonderful but they are harsher, harder, dirtier even and I believe this is because of the environment of Poland at the time (communism/post communism) and Kieslowski is not dishonest as a film maker. I assume he switched to French to make these smooth, soft aesthetic wonders for which he is so clearly suited. But not without a nod to reality - the death of Weronika, the flasher in the street, the car crash and removal of the burnt out vehicle. Although the film does not have the impact of a mainstream classic it is hard to know how to improve the film, it is more like the strong ocean undercurrents to the surface waves. So wonderful, so beautiful, cinema as art, fine art.

A few spoilery bits throughout! Just like a constellation you're unable to decipher yet sure its stars are linked together to form a certain pattern, the lives of Weronika and Véronique are inextricably, and inexplicably, linked by an invisible thread only intuitively felt. The former lives in Poland while the latter in France, they were born on the same day, share a knack for music (Weronika is a choir singer with an ethereal, angelic voice; Véronique is a music teacher), and suffer from a cardiological problem. They're, in a mythological sense of the word, doppelgängers, who'd better live in two parallel worlds lest bumping into each other would result in putting one another's lives into a tailspin. In one sense, the film is about that person in your dreams who you think, besides looking exactly like you, complements you in ways beyond your capacity even if you're sharing the same affinities as well. A splitting image you'd easily mistake for your other half even though you're pretty much a whole. Someone you long to meet to be fulfilled, and when awake, you grieve for the implausibility of it all. And I think it's within this realm where the movie operates on a subconscious level so that you're effortlessly connected emotionally with it by merely letting yourself immersed in its sepia-drenched images and its downpour to wash over you. However, I wouldn't buy that description at all. In another sense, it's a film about discovering one's own identity. Insofar this seems a proper description that I can't refute, I still think this is just scratching the surface; focusing on obvious details and disregarding the overarching theme. For me, The Double Life of Véronique is about grieving for your younger, juvenile self despite the naivety that led to its demise; about a deep-seated longing for the past that grows on while growing old even though you're more mature and successful now than you were way back when. And this is exactly where the film manages to hit some nostalgic notes, for the film seems to celebrate that desperate longing in one way or another. Besides the puppets show I'll mention later, there's a scene that sums up all this in a few words: Véronique's father shows her a fragrance to try it, she tells him it's nice but the one he showed her the other day was more pleasant. "This is from the end of Autumn, the other was from the beginning," is her father's reply, which he follows by wondering whether people would need this fragrance at all. The movie is chockablock with subtle visual and narrative details carry multi-layered symbolic significance that I couldn't get my head around in my first watch. The Double Life of Véronique is an enigmatic metaphysical tale with an expressionistic set design and cinematography littered with subtleties functioning as an objective correlative, stressing every emotional beat along the way. There's a lot of reflections in The Double Life of Véronique and the look-alike characters see themselves, or rather sense each other, in many things: images; objects. Throughout the first half, we see recurring distortions, upside-down images and mirror-like reflections, some show convexity and others concavity. We see plenty of objects such as a tram window glass, a man's magnifying spectacles, and a starry marble. They're all suggestive of something wrong rippling Weronika's life and irking her of late while bringing her fears of not being "alone in this world" to the fore. Besides, there are many juxtapository images the editing mix in that accentuate the dual nature at the core of the film. Indeed It's a film where objects and images hold immense value to the characters but also work as clues of revealing significance, and expository tools to the viewer as well. It's not until the marionette show where I started to fathom the film through the "metamorphosis by death" metaphor. The shroud is a cocoon? No wonder why there's a shot from the point of view of a corpse! Through this scene, Kieślowski makes a parallel to Véronique's double life, indicating that with the death of Weronika, Véronique began a fully-fledged new life. Moreover, by letting the camera linger on Jacob's face, Kieślowski captures the intensity of her internal conflict, and by ending the dizzying fits of Weronika with an off-kilter, tilted angle, we collapse with her. Thus, the camera is both a guiding force and a participant in Weronika's crumpling life and Veronique's quest of love and working out her existential issues. The Double Life of Véronique is just a flawless harmony or a poetic mood piece, buoyed by Idziak's ravishing cinematography, Preisner's haunting score, and sees Irène Jacob — in one of the most riveting performances I've ever seen to date — emoting endless feelings across the film's fleeting runtime, taking you on a rollercoaster of emotions from start to finish.

It's a neat film, smart concept, with a young and almost impossibly beautiful Irene Jacobs taking on the dual lead roles. Bit turgid at times but generally I can forgive that.

Beautifully shot and a good introduction to Krzysztof Kieslowski films where metaphysical connections are shown amidst the randomness of life. Jacob is serene yet purposeful in both roles

The reviews for this movie seem to be misleading. The mysterious connection between the two Veronicas takes a back seat in favor of a rather uninteresting love story. Even though this movie is visually stunning, in the end it's just another manic pixie dream girl who seems to have no other interest or motivation except the male protagonist.

Poetry between the frames. Music between the moving pictures. Together resonating much greater symphony.

Cryptic and emotionally honest. Irene Jacob is a perfect prism through which the energy of the scenes pass straight through to us, she's electric, clearly beautiful but alarmingly simple, humble and finely raw. I suppose I need to rewatch the film to glean the most from its intentionally hanging threads and its narrative unconventionality. As it stands I much preferred the clarity and through-lines of The Three Colours Trilogy, Double Life is a tone-poem using a single person to convey the alien unquantifiable nature of feelings, but without something to make me feel smart afterwards, without a tiny but more meat on the bones, I'm left admiring the audio-visual experience, the acting and the filmmaking, but not the story, without anything that approximates an arc.

Well written, well acted, well shot. Some of the scenes definitely stayed with me, but I feel like the story itself would've been more compelling with a bit less fantasy and a bit more mystery.

I hate when I’m watching a film and feel like I just don’t get it. The Double Life of Veronique perplexed me so much that I wanted to rewind several times and see if I had missed something that explained it all better. I couldn’t perceive why anything was happening or what kind of metaphysical thing was going on to link these two women together (other than the fact that they’re played by the same actress.) I guess there really isn’t any clear indication of these aspects of the story, it’s just a mystery and I don’t deal well with that kind of abstraction. The film is very slow-moving and quiet. I almost wish it continued with the short stories like the first one and was The Quintuple Life of Veronique or something like that, because at least that would keep things moving a bit more. I was struggling to focus on the film because it was so quiet and peaceful that it threatened to lull me to sleep. I also don’t deal all that well with pointless sex and nudity in film, and there was plenty of that here. I wouldn’t say that The Double Life of Veronique is a bad film, or that it has nothing appealing in it, but the way it was put together did not work for me. Like I said, maybe I just don’t get it.

Beautiful, lyrical, mystical -- but for some reason, it just didn't grab me. I'm not sure why. I wanted to like it more than I did.

4.1/5 A film that almost seems to exist and perfect itself inside its own artistic bubble, making for a strangely alien look into life that is as hard to criticize as it is hard not to recommend, at least only for the one of a kind experience.