A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988)

I like when recently watched films unexpectedly resonate with one another. Rather than watch the Hou Hsiao-hsien film I've had queued up for the past two days, I watched what is apparently one of his favorites. But more than Hou maybe, Tsai Ming-liang's Vive L'Amour (six years later) and Edward Yang's The Terrorizers (two years prior) struck me as spiritual brethren to this fantastic effort from Kieslowski. 

Of course, no one can spy on their neighbors without evoking Rear Window. And not knowing anything about A Short Film About Love, I had been curious about the Hitchcock influence on Kieslowski's Red. There is voyeurism abound in these three films, sure- the peepers, eavesdroppers, and us, the viewers. But A Short Film and Red are highly memorable in their emphasis on the spatial geography that connects and distances its characters.

Red is masterful in its omniscient view of Geneva, especially the street corner where Valentine and the young judge live. Long shots highlight near encounters and two lives intertwined. The windows of their apartments, through which the camera regularly moves, make their lives seem frighteningly vulnerable.

Traces of Rear Window can't be overlooked in this regard, but- to return to him- Hou Hsiao-hsien's Cafe Lumiere (a film whose status grows in my mind the more I think about it) also has some Red-like qualities. There is an incredible scene in Hou's film where the two main characters (friends or maybe more) are both shown riding trains and gazing out the window. Suddenly, we see the trains pass on adjacent rails, but Yoko (the female lead) is no longer gazing and slightly hidden from the window, so they never see each other.

Cafe Lumiere

Valentine in the background in Red

Is there ever anything but loneliness and emptiness behind this attention to spacial proximity? 

A Short Film About Love doesn't really play any beautiful serendipitous games for the sake of the audience because the peeping construct is, to some extent, dismantled very quickly. When Tomek and Magda meet, the film even flirts for a bit with being an uncomfortable sexual coming of age story in the vein of Skolimowski. But the climax of the film (a climax in itself) proves that it is indeed a film about love, which is more than sex. 

If not sex, what is love? When Tomek utters the word, he explains that he wants nothing. His love comes from her presence (even across the street), his visual access to her, and their overlapping routines. Tomek's innocence is underscored when we learn he no longer cares for Magda's sex life, just the banality of her everyday routines. She mistakenly tries to provoke some sexual response from him by having him caress her hands in the cafe and touch her thighs in her apartment. But the most important physical contact is clearly what begins and ends the film- Magda trying to touch the sleeping Tomek's bandaged wrist. It's a purely emotional gesture to frame this film of reverse sexual awakening.