Double Life

That feeling of deja-vu. When it seems that the moment has happened before. As if time is playing a trick and has somehow revolved back to that original moment and we're living it again--with the same gestures and dialogue, the same sensations. Sometimes it feels as if the deja vu is itself a deja vu, that we're revisiting something that we've already revisted--sometimes even more than once.

In the film The Double Life of Veronique, directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski (who also directed the trilogy: Red, White, and Blue, we meet a young woman (Veronika) in Warsaw who has just left a music competition and finds herself caught in the turmoil of a political demonstration. She drops her portfolio and while retrieving sheet music that has been strewn about on the street, she observes another woman (Veronique) getting on a bus. The woman looks exactly like Veronika. Once inside the bus, Veronique begins taking photographs of her "double" in rapid succession. Veronique looks at her photographer in quiet fascination.

The story reveals a portion of the lives of both women. We see certain similarities--their interest in music, a certain naivete, closeness with their respective fathers. One of the personas tells her father she feels she is about to fall in love. But it is the "other" Veronique who falls in love--with a writer of children's books. She sees him performing one of his stories as a puppet show. Chroeographing the movements of a beautifully fragile female puppet, he tells the sad story of a woman who lives in a box, dies, and is transformed into a butterfly. Veronique catches glimpses of the puppeteer as he works in the shadows. At one point, for no apparant reason, his gaze falls upon Veronique. It's as if he had been drawn to her by invisible strings.

It's a strange and ephemeral story. The writer of children's stories tells Veronique about the new story he is writing and twin puppets he is making to bring the story to life. It is what he perceives to be her story: at precisely the same moment as a particular woman was born in France, another woman who looks exactly like her was born in Poland. Actions by one are often 'perceived' by the other as if it were part of their own lives. So the two are invisibly intertwined.

A fascinating possibility, which could account for some of what we perceive as deja vu. Or at least why we sometimes do things without knowing why, sometimes even things that don't make sense and don't even feel like the things we would do on our own; and yet we feel pulled by some unknown force to do them. Or it could be part of the phenomenon of parallel lives, a parallel universe. That perplexing reality of looking into the mirror and wondering who is on the other side. Alice in the Looking Glass.

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