THREE COLOURS RED (Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Starring Irene Jacob, Jean-Louis Trintingant, Jean-Pierre Lont)

With the final episode of his trilogy built around the philosophical ideals of the French Revolution, or perhaps the last panel of a triptych based on the colours of the French flag, or even the grace note of a holy trinity of spiritual investigations, Krzysztof Kieslowski has announced his retirement from direction. A film-maker with a strong (even vaguely obsessive) sense of order (There have been two short films -About Love and About Killing- drawn from ten commandments -the television series Decalogue-, Veronica's double life and three colours) he brings his peculiarly questioning sense of cinema to a close with the kind of contrived conclusion designed to send audiences - and not least of all many of the characters he left stranded in limbo - home feeling satisfied instead of puzzled (the more usual reaction to a Kieslowski film). This doesn't mean the old man has gone soft, for rarely can an ostensibly happy ending have been wrought out of such tragic consequences for all but his chosen characters. Even at the last he seems to be mocking cinematic convention as he employs it, and lacing a final flourish of optimism with poisonous pessimism.

For Kieslowski, Blue was the colour of liberty. But it was freedom at a price, with a woman cut loose from her life by a terrible road accident, and struggling unhappily and uncertainly to find any kind of worth in her new independence. It was, to say the least, a moody blue. White was the colour of equality, but it was also the colour of pigeon shit, and on an uncharacteristically bright canvas Kieslowski played out a black comedy in which his main character sought not to become equal but superior. By a process of simple deduction, we can conclude that Red is the colour of fraternity, but although the film is his most philosophically upbeat, the dark shades of red he includes in every frame hint at violence and passion rather than simple friendship.

Despite a spectacular opening in which the camera appears to pursue a telephone signal from the caller, down the wire, deep underground and all the way to a distant phone, already engaged, Red is, for the most part, shot with restraint. It is carefully lit, thoughtfully framed, subtly edited, with only occasional unexpectedly intrusive camera movements (illustrating past actions) that serve to remind us Kieslowski is there, the God-like controller of the events on screen. Questions of whether there is any controlling hand in life and destiny, of whether there is any point in acting because it is impossible to know whether one's influence on events is good, bad or entirely insignificant are constantly addressed. One character, an old, embittered and helplessly cynical ex-judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant) even appears to play God, employing sophisticated electronics to eavesdrop on other people's lives, but comes down squarely on the side of non-intervention. It is only through his shifting relationship with a young, idealistic but tremulously sad and uncertain model (Irene Jacob) that he moves from observation to intervention. Yet Kieslowski's sadistic happy ending underlines the director's own ambivalence on the issues involved.

Red may be about the importance of fraternity, the kindness of strangers, the triumph of love in a loveless universe, but then again it may not. It is also a world of missed connections, where people desperately want to communicate but somehow fail (especially if they use the phone, apparently more an instrument than pleasure in Kieslowski's view). I have doubts about whether Kieslowski's films should ever be concluded as saying anything. He is indisputably one of the poets of the cinema, but it is a crafted, subdued, near-impenetrable poetry, all hints, riddles and ambiguity. Much of the pleasure to be gained from watching his films is musing on meaning, meditating on the questions posed, and piecing together the parts of a deliberately obscure puzzle. In Red there is a second relationship, of parallel lives that increasingly seem to mirror the judge's past, and reflect upon the model's future, but to say more would be to detract from the viewing experience. Kieslowski teases things out, never stating clearly who is who or what is what, as if demanding that his audience make an effort. In this way, at his best, he succeeds in making a kind of participatory cinema. Of course, sometimes you just come out scratching your head and pissed off because you've got no idea what it was all about. If Kieslowski is to your taste, Red may well be his most engaging and rewarding film, filled with a quiet sense of profundity, superbly acted, lovingly shot and containing at its core a series of philosophical encounters between model and judge that should leave you thinking long after the glow of the happy ending has begun to fade. I have mocked his obscurist ways in the past, but one hopes that that Europe's premiere art house director's self imposed retirement is about as effective as Frank Sinatra's, and that some day soon old red, white and blue eyes will be back.