To my surprise, I received my copy of Mk2's LA DOUBLE VIE DE VÉRONIQUE from Amazon.fr in today's mail. I'm very impressed with their service, as I wasn't expecting the movie to arrive for several more days.The cover art is both handsome and peculiar. What looks like the thin white outlining of Kieslowski's name on the accompanying illustration is actually transparent; the letters are glossy and stand out against the matte finish of the packaging. As you can see, Irène Jacob looks surprisingly unlike herself in the cover photo (which I've never seen before); she looks rather like Nastassja Kinski. The set is elegantly packaged in a slip case, from which a wallet-like insert slides out, which opens to reveal a menu enclosure and the two discs, one featuring the film and the other consisting of extras. As you slip the wallet out (a tight fit), the first thing you see is a handsome sheet of dark card stock resting on top of it; the card has a tall window cut out of it, which exposes a strip of 35mm film -- six frames worth -- a piece of the film itself. The card is numbered, one in a limited edition of 20,000.
My card bears the richly-doubled number of 4488 and I recognized the scene immediately as I held the film strip up to light. I was initially disappointed to find that it wasn't an image of the luminous Ms. Jacob, but then I realized it was something even more precious. It was my luck of the draw to receive the shot from Weronika's (Véronique's Polish doppelgänger) point of view as she suffers her heart attack onstage, moments into her first and only professional vocal performance, as she sees the conductor (Aleksander Bardini) giving her cue. It's the moment when her zenith of achievement is touched by the moment of her death. I feel like whomever ordered THE STANLEY KUBRICK ARCHIVES book and got the section of 2001 film strip that showed the femur turning into the spaceship.
So I count my lucky stars. After all, I could have received six frames of the pedestrian who opens his overcoat and flashes her.
