Polish immigrant Karol Karol finds himself out of a marriage, a job and a country when his French wife, Dominique, divorces him after six months due to his impotence. Forced to leave France after losing the business they jointly owned, Karol enlists fellow Polish expatriate Mikolah to smuggle him back to their homeland.
Kieslowski, who so keenly satirized the crippling excesses of communism in his earlier work, unflinchingly has a go at training-wheels capitalism, but not without affection for the thawing tundra of his beleaguered mother country.
– Jonathan Kiefer,
Salon.com,
12 Jun 2002
fresh:
How could the creator of Blue, the story of a woman who grieves by moping around Paris in a chichi haircut, possibly have followed it with such a rich, light-handed marvel?
– Caryn James,
New York Times,
30 Aug 2004
fresh:
It's often cruel, of course, and cool as an ice-pick, but it's still endowed with enough unsentimental humanity to end with a touching, lyrical admission of the power of love. Essential viewing.
– Geoff Andrew,
Time Out,
9 Feb 2006
fresh:
The entertaining second seg of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy is involving, bittersweet and droll.
– Lisa Nesselson,
Variety,
26 Mar 2009
rotten:
he love that figures centrally in White appears more as a postulate than as a realized fact. To achieve something more durable and persuasive, real characters are required, not allegorical stick figures.