Trois couleurs Blanc

Brief summary

The film opens with a brief shot of a suitcase being transported on a conveyor belt, then shifts to a Paris divorce court where Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), a Polish barber, is pleading with the judge – the same legal proceedings that Julie (Juliette Binoche) briefly stumbled upon in Blue. The immigrant Karol, through an interpreter, is made to understand that his wife Dominique (Julie Delpy) does not love him as he was unable to consummate the marriage. The divorce is granted, and Dominique proceeds to give Karol a suitcase with his possessions. Karol then loses access to his bank account, his passport, and ownership of a salon he and Dominique owned jointly. Karol breaks into the salon to sleep but is discovered by Dominique. The two first initiate sex, but Dominique stops and tells Karol that she no longer loves him. She then intentionally sets the salon drapes on fire, forcing Karol to flee and become a beggar.

While performing songs using a comb in a Paris Métro station, Karol meets a fellow Pole, Mikołaj (Janusz Gajos). While Karol has lost his wife and his property, Mikołaj is married and successful; he offers Karol a job – he would have to kill someone who wants to die but does not have enough courage to do it himself – but Karol rejects it. Karol proceeds to show Mikołaj his ex-wife from the street outside Dominique's window, but he sees the shadow of her with another man. Karol rushes back and calls her from a telephone booth at the station, only for Dominique to make him listen to her having sex, causing him to break down. Through a hazardous scheme, Mikołaj helps Karol return to Poland hidden in the suitcase shown at the beginning of the film, which is later stolen by employees at the airport. After discovering how poor he is, the airport employees beat him up and leave him in the Polish countryside. Karol manages to reach Warsaw and finds his brother Jurek (Jerzy Stuhr).

Karol soon returns to work at his brother's salon and later takes on another job as a bodyguard in a seemingly innocent cash exchange office. Using his position as a deceptively foolish bodyguard, Karol spies on his bosses and discovers their scheme to purchase different pieces of land that they know are going to be targeted by big companies for development and resell for large profits. Karol beats them to it and then tells his ex-bosses that if they kill him all his estate shall go to the church, forcing them to purchase the land from him instead. Karol then tracks down Mikołaj and asks for the job he offered to him previously. Mikołaj meets Karol in a Warsaw Metro tunnel for the execution of the "suicide", which turns out that Mikołaj is the intended victim and asks Karol to kill him. Karol first shoots a blank into Mikołaj's chest and asks him if he really wants to go through with it as the next bullet is real. Mikołaj changes his mind and thanks Karol for helping him feel alive again. He proceeds to pay Karol the money anyway, saying that he earned it.