In _Three Colors: Red_, the Judge foretells that Valentine (Irene Jacob) will wake up one day beside her lover, 50 year old, and be happy. That scene is obviously a valentine to Irene Jacob, director Kieslowski's great muse of his later years. In 2016 Jacob turned 50. I have no doubt that the Polish master's
prophecy has come true.

In addition to that, Jacob has had a vibrant singing career, and has headlined stage plays. She rarely does cinema anymore, but has turned in powerful supporting role work in TV series. I haven't see "Patrick Melrose," but she
is amazing as the mother-with-a-past to a main character in "The Collector."

I finally get to see her light up "The Affair" season 3 as Juliette le Gall,
a professor of medieval literature visiting a small college in New York. It
is slowly revealed that she may be taking a break from a sad domestic saga;
her much older husband, once her teacher, has Alzheimer's. Juliette falls
for a main character of the show, a self-destructive writer who has just been released from prison (because that's the way cable show writers fantasize
about themselves, I suppose -- irresistible in spite of being a mess).

Most episodes in "The Affair" appear to be told from one of its character's point of view. Sometimes the same event is portrayed from the vantage of
two characters. This is mostly done in the most awkward and unsubtle way imaginable (_The Disappearance of Eleonor Rigby_ this is not). The four
main characters are among the most navel gazing, insufferable creatures
ever recorded. Two of these miserables would into each other, indulge in recriminations and marathon pouts of self-pity, then sleep together.
Next episode: pick two other characters and repeat. Ruth Wilson, who
played the brilliant sociopath in "Luther," quite that show for this?

Jacob's character is by comparison such a breath of fresh air, lending
mature wisdom, reserve, subtle humor, and dignity to the sordid proceedings. Has any actress ever aged as gracefully as she has?

The show is based in Montauk, which reminds me that Volker Schlondorff's _Return to Montauk_ will be released soon ...

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I returned to Boston for the first time in what must have been 10 years.
I barely recognized Harvard Square, where I once saw young women paint themselves gold and sing opera in the streets. Now the place has been colonized by chain stores and comic book joints, and looks like any
grubby college town. At least Brattle Theater is still around, and if
I had visited a month earlier I would have caught Kieslowski's Three
Colors Trilogy! At least someone, some repertory theater, still remembers
the Polish master.

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Lee Chang-Dong seems to remember. His second feature _Pepper Mint Candy_ reminds me and others of Kieslowski's _Blind Chance_, although it is
unique in major ways too. _Blind Chance_ explores three different scenarios based on the result of a chance encounter, finding that the protagonist
acts with equal integrity in disparate possible lives. _Pepper Mint
Candy_ progress anti-chronologically, like Harold Pinter's _Betrayal_,
and the betrayal is the society's towards the individual. The protagonist, once a sensitive young man, is systematically beaten into a ruthless
torturer and ultimately a suicidal basket case by the army and the police
in the police state that was South Korea. Lee once again proves that
he is among the greatest and most humanistic director working today.
His _Burning_, which received rave reviews at Cannes, is the must-see
film in the next year.

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