The Double Life of Veronique is a lovely film about a Polish woman who dies in the middle of performing a concert, and then her exact French double quits her ambitions because of poor health, and starts falling for a puppeteer. The movie ends with the main character being deeply inspired by a tree.
Ok, so perhaps that came off a bit tongue in cheek, but I am serious about the above description, and the fact that the film is lovely, besides the cinematography and the main actress, the film leaves you with that delightful feeling that its about something deep, but you have no clue what. Lets see if we can get more out of it.
The easiest interpretation of the film is that its a religious tale, comparing the woman/en to a puppet as a metaphor for the question of free will. This interpretation is obviously helped by the fact that the director Krzysztof Kieślowski made several other movies which were explicitly religious, and that there's a lot that can be done with this idea. The movie shows an obvious irreverence towards God in this case, with the puppetmaster being of somewhat questionable morals. But the film shows an excess of support towards the French Veronique's decisions to break away from the fate of her polish counterpart. Implying a sort of free will, and giving a respect to puppets which is often denied them.
My issue with this interpretation is the closedness of it. Fate is a heavy word that implies something in the way of plot/destiny, whereas the film seems to pay the most attention to the non-plot related points, the look of something (in the stunning cinematography), a missed glance, someone who you don't know at all, the appearance of a tree. There is an overwhelming feeling that fate is unimportant. What's important rather is the plotless bits. The puppets in the film never seem to be following a course of action, but rather look to imitating the act of humans, and are the most stunning when they imitate one of the casual actions that we do one hundred times a day perfectly.
In my opinion the film has plentiful connections with the Bresson, who forced his actors not to act out motivations, but to do actions without motivation. Bresson's characters had their lives controlled by fate, but fate was at the same time unimportant in their lives. Similarly the puppets are not living, but they are "brought to life" in order to produce momentary matters of importance.
The tragedy both Bresson's characters, Veronique and her double, along with all the rest of us, is that we are forced to die when there is so much more important to do.
