The Double Life of Veronique is finally being released on DVD last month -- my best Christmas gift.

I saw this film four times theatrically. When it was first screened, I was a secondary school student. I still remember watching it for the first time with a classmate at Cinema Columbia Classics (closed down in 1997) in 1992. For ninety-seven minutes I sat in silence. A beam of light bounces from one to the other and right before my eyes the lives of Weronika and Veronique.

The Double Life of Veronique is the story of two identical women -- Veronique in France and Weronika in Poland -- who are born at the same time, both suffer from heart failure and are blessed with beautiful voices. Apart from one moment when Weronika catches a glimpse of Veronique unknowingly photographing her, they grow up unaware of each other. However, in some mysterious and irresolvable way, they have a mythical, almost magnetic interaction. Weronika feels an uncanny connection with her double, "I have this feeling that I'm not alone". The two women then set off on two different paths, one to death, the other to life.

When I left the cinema I felt confused and almost disconnected, I was speechless. I kept thinking to myself "I've never seen anything like this before."

What is the significance of the old woman carrying a sack, who turns up both in France and Poland? What should it mean that Weronika toys with a string, while Veronique receives a shoelace? And how about the transparent ball? If the person being watched is also the watcher, I wonder who might be watching me. ... It took time for the film to leave my head; and it took time for me to return to the "reality". I felt like I'd just discovered another piece of myself.

The Double Life of Veronique deals with the spiritual, intuitive, emotional inner world of human beings. It is enveloped by a mystical sense that life is controlled by "forces" that are beyond human understanding, and cannot be easily or rationally explained. Yet, Krzysztof Kieslowski served us pieces from our own life's puzzle, through lighting, sound, music, and camera movements.

At times the ideas were too much that I felt as if my mind was rocked by explosions. Then it came the questions: what is film? What is the meaning of film?

It was only when I watched The Double Life of Veronique that I first realized film is not simply entertainment. Film is art. Film is a language. Film as media presents possibilities that are absent in a written work. Movies are the one of the most extraordinary things in life. They have the power to open my eyes, to move and stir feeling in a human being, they envoke passion and extreme emotion. As I thought about this more, its implications struck me as larger and larger. It changed the way I look at life and the way I feel about life and the way I basically live my life.

Ever since then, cinema has been my second home. I've realized that I need to explore this "another world" that I had discovered. Movies have constantly affected my life over the past 15 years.

I think to this day, I can say no other film has touched me so intimately. The Double Life of Veronique has totally changed my life. Film has molded me into the person that I am today. Thank you Krzysztof Kieslowski, my favorite director, for being my mentor.

Jan 2007