Agnes Varda's unconventional memoir: art among the trash

Agnes Varda is an acquired taste, I guess, or maybe some love her work right from the start. I'm not a huge fan, but she's different and quirky and her films will hold your interest and attention, even if sometimes leaving you, or me, totally puzzled. "The Beaches of Agnes" is her memoir of a sort, an attempt to tell her life story through film, but in her typically quirky and whimsical and unconventional manner. The most striking elements are the many imaginative, almost surreal compositions that she creates, made all the more sharp by her continually playing with frames: the frame of the movie, most of all, in that we see her directing her own film and often even see the camera crew at work, and also the use of frames, and the long and fascinating opening sequences, filmed on a French beach, using mirrors and frames arranged in the sand, to break up and reorganize the images. But this isn't an "art" film in the boring arthouse sense; she is trying, in her fashion, to tell a story, of a young girl (herself) growing up in wartime France, on the water (obviously, a constant theme) - she visits childhood sites and pointedly does not experience any Proustian revelations, that's pretty funny! - uses clips from her man films, travels to places she had lived and worked, tells of her children, most of all of her life with Jacques Demy, the director, and of his death 20 years ago from AIDS (not explained), and the sorrow she felt but her eager spirit as she goes on, still directing a lot at 80+, good for her! It's not a film with any true narrative arc, nor is it meant to be. Paradoxically, though it is very "directed" or composed, you learn more about Varda by indirection, but just picking up what a creative and whimsical character she is, always thinking and seeing things differently, as you also would see if you watch her The Gleaners and I. She enjoys hanging around in flea markets and it's obvious - she finds art among the trash.