Liveblogging with Peter Bradshaw

Having been lucky enough to win a competition on the Guardian website, I trotted over to the Guardian headquarters with the most disgusting moustache (it's Movember!) and spent this evening liveblogging with Peter Bradshaw - renowned British film critic - and Catherine Shoard - Guardian's Head of Film - through Kieslowski's final instalment of his European arthouse Three Colours trilogy, Three Colours: Red. I've never done any liveblogging before, and also hadn't seen the film before, so was feeling slightly nervous beforehand, but luckily the atmosphere was very relaxed, and we had the Three Colours: Red drinking game to play, which basically involves the following: drinking cherry brandy (or red wine) everytime you see 1. Valentine with wet hair. 2. Judge Kern's Mercedes 3. You hear or see Van den Budenmayer. Trust me, if playing attentively you will be three sheets to the wind by the end of it.

However, I have to admit that I did not exactly adhere to these rules and play the game properly, because the film was playing with any stops, and liveblogging simultaneously was keeping me focussed enough. I was emailing a flow of comments to Catherine who was feeding it in live on the website, and readers online streaming the film were then able to express any comments on the blog below. It was quite a thrill and once you get going you can feel the ebb and flow and it gets a little easier. Peter even gave a shout-out to the fact I'm getting married in a few weeks, and I got a couple of "props" from some die-hard Kieslowski fans. There was even some mistaken identity confusion going on on Twitter, which involved a particularly scary-looking dude and something about a multi-talented acting dwarf!

Anyway, during the banter and larks we were obviously watching Kieslowski's revered classic, which like the French flag, is the last in the series, and with it's sultry willowy lead, Irene Jacob as Valentine, and it's beautiful cinematography, it's a pleasure to watch. Roger Ebert once commented, "This is the kind of film that makes you feel intensely alive whilst watching it", and under more solitary conditions, shutting yourself off from the world, it would be hard to disagree. There are so many themes pulsing through the film - agape, fraternity, the complexity of fate, chance, love, voyeurism - that it demands multiple viewings (just as its predecessors do). I certainly look forward to watching it again, although wouldn't change a single thing about my first viewing. Check it out for yourself on the following link for the Guardian website:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/nov/17/three-colours-red-live. Very cool of them to have me over, and I learnt a lot in the process from them. Peter is quite an authority on the films and you can read a great piece about the Three Colours through the following link http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/nov/10/have-three-colours-faded.