Film of the decade

One of the great losses to cinema this decade was the untimely death three years ago of Krzysztof Kieslowski, the pre-eminent European director of his generation, at the age of 54. His unforgettable swansong was the magisterial Three Colours trilogy (1993-1994), which began with the emotionally charged Blue, starring Juliette Binoche as a woman re-inventing her life after losing her husband and child in a car accident. Then came White, a keenly plotted and engaging satire on the new capitalism in Kieslowski's native Poland, and finally the wise and wonderful Red, the warmest and most optimistic of the trilogy, in which a student and model (Irene Jacob) befriends a lonely retired judge played by Jean-Louis Trintignant at his melancholy best.