Krzysztof Kiesloski's farewell to cinema - and, as it would sadly turn out, his farewell to this world - the Three Colours Trilogy, would have made for remarkable film-making under any conditions. For one thing, the three films - Blue (liberty), White (equality) and Red (fraternity); a sequence modelled after tenets of the French Revolution - debuted at consecutive major European festivals (Venice, Berlin and Cannes, respectively) within eight months of one another. They went on the win major prizes at the first two, only for Red to loose out on an unprecedented grand-slam to Querentino's bloated Pulp Fiction. The decision looks no less absurd now than it did at the time. Within less than a year, Kieslowski would die on the operating table during heart surgery.

Geoff Andrews is an unrepentant fan. He writes of leaving Red's premiere stunned and speechless, but his BFI Modern Classic is worth rather more than the ramblings of a partisan viewer. Instead he uses the space to autopsy each film in turn (the sequence is important, if not critical), attempting to decode, in general, and explain in particular the significance of the eponymous colours, in particular, but never at the expense of Kieslowski and co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz's essential humanity. These are works, he seems to suggest, that should be felt as much as understood. And while they remain, for a general audience, more approachable than, say, the ravishing but oblique and oddly disturbing The Double of Veronique, there is still plenty to digest.

Which does rather show up the central flaw in the BFI's Classics scheme: sometimes these pocket books are just too small to take it all in. With something like Mark Kermode's essay on The Exorcist (good book, lousy movie) or Anne Billson's The Thing (good movie, okay book), the restriction works well, but in here or the recent L'Avventura volume, you leave satisfied but not always sated.

But still, you do rather get the impression that might just be Andrews' purpose: these texts are designed as much to direct you back to the work as they are to explain them away. And even a seasoned Kieslowski watcher will find much in here to admire and intrigue. The suggestion of connections between Red and The Tempest, and the added value of one of the director's final interviews should be incentive enough to invest. For as Andrews himself concludes, "If....readers return to the trilogy to discover new facets of Kieslowski's genius for themselves, it will have achieved its purpose."