One Paragraph Movie Review: The Double Life of Veronique

One hundred and fourteenth film: The Double Life of Veronique. When I was at art school, a fellow student I couldn’t stand went on and on about this movie, so I never watched it. And now that I have, I must say — it’s just the kind of thing people I can’t stand like. A beautiful female lead character with an enviable haircut who looks whimsically upwards at every opportunity, meaningful gazes through a glass orb so that all the metaphors are convex and upside-down, a thoroughly, predictably twee premise, and the ludicrous suggestion that any woman at all could fall in love with a puppeteer. This plodding piece of 1991 Euro-schmaltz reminded me a lot of 2001’s Amelie, with one major difference: I liked Amelie. There are lots and lots of movies that try to do what The Double Life of Veronique tries to do, and they succeed. Watch those instead. One irrelevant dwarf lawyer out of five.