Brève histoire d'amour

I invite viewers of this film to compare it with the short version (Dekalog 6) and the script. All three differ from one another. They have different endings and lead to different interpretations.

In this film, the feature length version, Kieslowski portrays human love poetically, authentically, and powerfully. I consider Tomek as a lover by the form of incarnation. He takes into different forms (post worker, milkman, voyeur) in order to show his love towards Magda. It is important to notice that Tomek sheds his blood when Magda has sex with others. There is a scene in which Magda spills a bottle of milk and cries. Tomek sees her from his telescope. Only he is present for Magda. Overall, Tomek's love is both sacrificial and redemptive.

After Tomek's hospitalization, Magda dresses more conservatively. She does not engage in sexual affairs with any man. In this sense, Tomek's love redeems the lustful Magda. The commandment (Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery) functions in the background. We normally perceive a voyeur as being adulterous. But in Tomek's situation, he peeps into Magda not as an adulterous voyeur. He loves Magda by peeping her as an incarnate. He expresses sacrificial, and redemptive love in a humane and authentic manner.

A short film about love is truly the work of a master,although it was released as part of The Dekalog (all excellent) it stands out above the rest for it's detailed characterization.the film is so well cast,you almost forget your watching a film with actors,but feel your witnessing a human tragedy unfold before you eyes,the performances are so convincing and the setting so real its like watching a documentary on the human condition,and the message is a clear one,not all love has an happy ending,indeed there is a very painful side to feeling love and never as the cinema explored it so poignantly as Krzysztof Kieslowski

Kieslowski's movies are very unique in the sense of reflecting on feelings. One needs to think outside of the box and try to go beyond the surface... His goal is not to create an average love story, but to put love bare as it is in the center. What is love? One could list a number of adjectives, to say the least; but instead let's just use one sentence: love wants nothing in return. To love and being loved, two sides of a coin, is presented to us in this beautiful movie. Little conversation, nice music, great frames and shots, well-chosen actors, actresses, although very few; intense, touching, and serious.

It helps a bit if the watcher knows some about Eastern-European culture. But it is by no means necessary. One should only have been given the gift of being loved and to have loved.

Unlike the other masterpiece in his Decalogue, Killing, in 'A Short Film About Love' Kieslowski treats the subject of love with an extraordinarily delicate, rather than a polemic, eye. As ever he manages to express more with subtlety than most directors ever will with expression: it is rather what is not said, what is not expressed, that leaves an indelible mark upon us.

Olaf Lubaszenko's central performance as the boy is, rather than 'opaque' as it has been termed, engrossing from the start. His innocence and fragility, just like the film's, are an invitation to the intimacy we progressively acquire. We, the film's audience, watch engrossed and exposed just as does he, and, in another sense, does the subject of his observations. His telescope becomes a direct motif; distance, separation, enlargement: all the things the filmmaker provides for the viewer. Thus, at emotional, intellectual and metacinematic levels the film explores its themes: observation and love.

While it may not come to solid conclusions (nor ought it to), the sensitivity with which the director watches his actors is utterly compelling. The resultant negotiation between man and women, subject and observer, viewer and filmmaker is a relationship, a love affair. Perhaps Barthes might have sought to go further, waiting for the end of the film, its 'death', to find psychological and sexual consummation to such an affair, and the film may support such a reading. Even a far less academic approach is sufficient, however, in order to enjoy the work at it appears at face value. We do not need to analyse in order to feel, and it is the film's emotional impact that remains when our brief voyeurism, our visit to the cinema, ends.

I suppose Gaspar Noe never seen this film, otherwise he would've known how to make a movie about love.

I have no words...