History Film / ThreeColorsTrilogy

''Trzy kolory. Biały'' (English: ''Three Colors: White'', French: ''Trois Couleurs: Blanc'') (1994): Based on the principle of equality. After the beloved (French) wife (Creator/JulieDelpy) of Polish hairdresser Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) divorces him thus rendering him destitute, he makes it back to Poland, manages to make it big by blackmailing his bosses and then schemes to extract revenge on his wife.

* GirlInABox: Mikołaj helps Karol return to Poland by stashing him inside a suitcase on a flight from Paris to Warsaw. The suitcase is stolen upon landing, and when the thieves find Karol inside instead of something worth selling, they beat him up. To add insult to injury, he only has 2 FF and a cheap Russian watch to steal.

* SecretlySelfish: Joseph believes everybody is like this, that all their "good deeds" are ultimately selfish. That includes Valentine, and he accuses her of this to her face. The events of the movie eventually prove him wrong.

* BabiesEverAfter: A curious {{Subversion}} of this trope, since the pregnant woman is the mistress of Patrice.
* DefrostingIceQueen: Julie. She's actually a very nice person at heart, but the loss she suffers makes her very cold and detached for much of the movie (which suits the film's very cold lighting).

* DownerBeginning: Julie's husband and little daughter are killed in a car wreck which she survives.
* FadeToBlack: Used to represent Julie's difficulty in moving on. It's an extremely unusual type of JumpCut since the film fades to black only to fade to the exact same moment.

* LettingTheAirOutOfTheBand: Julie collects her husband's (?) last manuscript. The music that he (?) composed plays on the soundtrack. When Julie takes that manuscript and throws it into a trash compactor, the music distorts, slows down, and stops.

* PlayingCyrano: Though it's not outright stated, it's implied that Julie could be the writer of her husband's music (or at least that they collaborated, but the works were published under his name).

* BatmanGambit: Karol's plan to take revenge against Dominique requires her to come to Poland upon being informed of his (faked) death and the fact that she has inherited his entire fortune, so that he can then have the police arrest her on suspicion of having murdered him for his money. Sure enough, she takes the bait and is thrown in prison.

* FrameUp: Dominique sets fire to the curtains of her studio in the beginning of the film and pins this on Karol, knowing that he won't be able to fight arson charges given this "evidence." [[spoiler: Karol gets his revenge by framing Dominique in turn for his murder, which gets her sent to prison.]]
* GirlInABox: Mikołaj helps Karol return to Poland by stashing him inside a suitcase on a flight from Paris to Warsaw. The suitcase is stolen upon landing, and when the thieves find Karol inside instead of something worth selling (and, to add insult to injury, he only has 2 FF and a cheap Russian watch on him), they beat him up.

* LewdLustChasteSex: A failed attempt at sex is shown in all its glory to establish the desperation of the participants and of their relationship. Success much later on fades to white.

* MadLove: Despite having her arrested and jailed, Dominique finds herself pining for Karol, who pines for her as well. In the final shot of the film, Karol stands in the prison courtyard and looks at her cell window with a pair of binoculars; he weeps after he sees her mime that she would say "yes" if he asked her to marry him again.

* CallBack: Right at the end of the film there's a freeze frame on Valentine as she's emerging from the police rescue boat. The freeze frame catches her looking to the left of the screen against a red background, framed in the same manner as the advertisement that was all over Geneva.
* CrazyJealousGuy: Valentine's boyfriend. He's not that crazy to commit a crime, but is very jealous, constantly demanding to know why she didn't answer the phone if it has taken several attempts to get her to pick up.
* {{Cuckold}}: Joseph's ex-lover was unfaithful to him, as is Auguste's partner. Auguste sneaks into her apartment and sees the two having sex.

** The opening sequence is a sped-up montage showing all the cables and wires a phone call from Britain to France travels through. We later find out that Joseph has been tapping into his neighbors' phone lines and recording their calls, just for kicks.

** Auguste's girlfriend running a weather service and giving forecasts for trips across the English Channel. In the end, a storm sinks both a ferry and a pleasure craft.
* IAmNotYourFather: Valentine tells Joseph that her brother Marc only found out a year earlier that his father wasn't his mother's husband at all, and this has been part of the motivation behind his drug addiction.

* TheLostLenore: Joseph tells Valentine that he was in love once, many years earlier, but he caught her cheating on him, and she later died in an accident. His grief prompted him to give up on seeking love, which led to him becoming the embittered, eavesdropping shut-in he was when Valentine first met him.

* MirrorCharacter: Auguste's life is very similar to Joseph--they both are judges, they both loved and lost when they were young, they both followed the love of their youth to England before losing them. They even both dropped a lawbook which fell open to a specific page that turned up on their judge's examination. Fortunately for the former, his meeting with Valentine at the end of the film means his life probably won't be the same as the judge (and maybe will turn out for the best).

* SlidingScaleOfCynicismVersusIdealism: Valentine's idealism vs Joseph's cynicism. He ends up moving across the scale at the end, though.

* RuleOfThree: Obviously.
* TheShutIn: Julie in ''Blue'', Kern in ''Red''.

* DiedDuringProduction: Patrice, in-universe.

* WhyWeAreBummedCommunismFell: The overarching mood of the movie.

* ManChild: Valentine's boyfriend.

* TheLoinsSleepTonight: The reason why Dominique asks for a divorce is that "Tonight" was every day.

* {{Cuckold}}: Kern's ex-lover was unfaithful to him, as is Auguste's partner. Auguste sneaks into her apartment and sees the two having sex.

Critically-acclaimed trilogy of French/Polish drama films directed by Creator/KrzysztofKieslowski (also the director of ''Film/TheDecalogue'', ''Film/BlindChance'', and ''Film/TheDoubleLifeOfVeronique''), and released in relatively close proximity to each other in 1993 - 1994.

[[quoteright:325:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Trilogy_dvdcover_high_8053.jpg]]

** There are little details telling us the films are part of a same work, like characters from one movie making very brief cameos into another (for example, in ''Blue'', Julie accidentally intrudes on the divorce trial of Karol and Dominique, which we then see from their perspective in ''White'') or old people recycling glass.

* OffscreenCrash: Though we do see the car smashed immediately after.
* OminousLatinChanting: Except that it's Greek.

* TheLostLenore: Joseph tells Valentine that he was in love once, many years earlier, but he caught her cheating on him, and she later died in an accident. His grief prompted him to give up on seeking love.

* ContinuityNod: There are little details telling us the films are part of a same work, like characters from one movie making very brief cameos into another or old people recycling glass.

* ThematicSeries: The series revolves around specific French ideals as opposed to specific characters.

* BrokenBird / DefrostingIceQueen: Julie. She's actually a very nice person at heart, but the loss she suffers makes her very cold and detached for much of the movie (which suits the film's very cold lighting).

* OutlivingOnesOffspring
* PlayingCyrano: Though it's not outright stated, it's implied that Julie could be the writer of her husband's music.

* BatmanGambit: Karol's plan to take revenge against Dominique.
* EverythingIsAnInstrument: Comb and paper.
* GirlInABox: This is how Karol travels to Poland.
* ICannotSelfTerminate: [[spoiler:Mikołaj]].

* TheImmodestOrgasm: Dominique.

* MadLove: Despite having her arrested and jailed, Dominique finds herself pining for Karol, who pines for her as well.

* SpiritualSuccessor: To [[Film/TheDecalogue ''Decalogue Ten'']]. It shares its BlackComedy tonality and has a lot of other similarites, such as somewhat shady protagonists and quirky side characters. ''White'' also stars the same actors (Zbigniew Zamachowski and Jerzy Stuhr) as a [[SiblingTeam pair of brothers]] that [[{{Expy}} behave very similarly]] to their ''Decalogue'' counterparts.

* CallBack: Right at the end of the film there's a freeze frame on Valentine as she's emerging from the police rescue boat. The freeze frame catches her looking to the left of the screen against a red background, framed in the same manner as the advertisement that was all over Paris.
* CrazyJealousGuy: Valentine's boyfriend. He's not that crazy to commit a crime, but is very jealous.

* SpiritualSuccessor: To Film/TheDecalogue. Just like that one, it's a series of seperate films that are all interconnected by [[TheCameo cameos of characters]] and an [[ThematicSeries overarching theme]], with each film covering one seperate aspect of that theme (TheTenCommandments in the ''Decalogue'' and the ideals of the French Revolution in the ''Three Colors Trilogy'').

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Trilogy_dvdcover_high_8053.jpg]]

-->--'''Three Color Trilogies''' [[https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-three-colors-trilogy-blue-white-red review]], Creator/RogerEbert

* FadeToBlack: Used to represent Julie’s difficulty in moving on. It's an extremely unusual type of JumpCut since the film fades to black only to fade to the exact same moment.

* NiceGuy: Julie is a female example. When she lets go of her angst, she helps a lot of people on her way, even providing her husband’s mistress and her unborn baby with Patrice’s old home.

* OminousLatinChanting: Except that it’s Greek.

* PlayingCyrano: Though it’s not outright stated, it’s implied that Julie could be the writer of her husband’s music.

* BatmanGambit: Karol’s plan to take revenge against Dominique.

* IJustShotMarvinInTheFace: Karol stares at the inside of a gun’s barrel.

* CrazyJealousGuy: Valentine’s boyfriend. He’s not that crazy to commit a crime, but is very jealous.

* ManChild: Valentine’s boyfriend.

* MirrorCharacter: Auguste’s life is very similar to Joseph--they both are judges, they both loved and lost when they were young, they both followed the love of their youth to England before losing them. They even both dropped a lawbook which fell open to a specific page that turned up on their judge's examination. Fortunately for the former, his meeting with Valentine at the end of the film means his life probably won’t be the same as the judge (and maybe will turn out for the best).
* PlatonicLifePartners: Valentine and Joseph. The age gap might have something to do with it, although he says to her: “Perhaps you’re the woman I never met”.
* SlidingScaleOfCynicismVersusIdealism: Valentine’s idealism vs Joseph’s cynicism. He ends up moving across the scale at the end, though.

* NotSoDifferent: Auguste’s life is very similar to Joseph--they both are judges, they both loved and lost when they were young, they both followed the love of their youth to England before losing them. They even both dropped a lawbook which fell open to a specific page that turned up on their judge's examination. Fortunately for the former, his meeting with Valentine at the end of the film means his life probably won’t be the same as the judge (and maybe will turn out for the best).

* AuthorExistenceFailure: Patrice, in-universe.

[[folder:The trilogy as a whole]]
* ColorMotif: In each film the color corresponding to the title is prominently featured. In ''Red'', the billboards of Valentine all over Paris have her against a red background, and the theater where she has a modeling gig is all done up in red as well. In ''Blue'', there is a "blue room" in Julie's mansion which is painted all blue.
* ContinuityNod: There are little details telling us the films are part of a same work, like characters from one movie making very brief cameos into another or old people recycling glass.
** At the end of ''Red'', a fatal ferry crash has only a few survivors: all of the main characters from the trilogy. The Judge sees the news report on TV.
* MythologyGag:
** Van den Budenmayer, a fictitious composer (even though he's treated as a real composer) mentioned in ''Blue'' and ''Red'', was mentioned earlier in both ''Film/TheDecalogue'' (more precisely, ''Decalogue Nine'') and ''Film/TheDoubleLifeOfVeronique''. The main theme of ''Decalogue Nine'' (written by Van den Budenmayer in-world) is featured on two occasions in ''Red''.
** There's also a re-use of a funeral march motif Preisner wrote for ''No End'' (his first collaboration with Kieslowski) as a prominent recurring musical theme in ''Blue''. In there, this composition ''also'' gets ascribed to Van den Budenmayer.
* RainbowMotif: Blue for liberty, White for equality, Red for fraternity, like in the French flag.
* RuleOfThree: Obviously.
* TheShutIn: Julie in ''Blue'', Kern in ''Red''.
* SpiritualSuccessor: To Film/TheDecalogue. Just like that one, it's a series of seperate films that are all interconnected by [[TheCameo cameos of characters]] and an [[ThematicSeries overarching theme]], with each film covering one seperate aspect of that theme (TheTenCommandments in the ''Decalogue'' and the ideals of the French Revolution in the ''Three Colors Trilogy'').
* ThematicSeries: The series revolves around specific French ideals as opposed to specific characters.
[[/folder]]

!!''Blue'' provides examples of:

!!''White'' provides examples of:

!!''Red'' provides examples of:

!!The trilogy as a whole provides examples of:

* FadeToBlack: Used to represent Julie’s difficulty in moving on.

* HookerWithAHeartOfGold

* MythologyGag: Van den Budenmayer, a fictitious composer (even though he's treated as a real composer) mentioned in ''Blue'' and ''Red'', was mentioned earlier in both ''Film/TheDecalogue'' and ''Film/TheDoubleLifeOfVeronique''.
* RainbowMotif: Blue for liberty, White for equality, Red for fraternity. You know, like in the French flag.