Varda by Agnes, Lesotho film, Black Bird, Buena Vista Social Club, Belfast, 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days, Thirteen Lives Las Year at Marienbad

 Elliot’s Watching - August 2022

All fans of the work of Agnes Varda - which should mean anyone really interested in European cinema of the past 70 years - should take the time to watch her final film, Varda by Agnes (2019). It’s a tour of (most of) her best films with live narration from Varda herself, addressing various groups of students and filmmakers. She concentrates on her works from late career, with hardly a mention of her earlier, somewhat more conventional films such as her real-time drama Cleo from 5 to 7 or her landmark feminist work One Sings, the Other doesn’t, nor does she dwell on any collaborations with her late husband, Jacques Demy. Rather, these late-career works are more like experiments in participatory, public art - one that describes her work style and her innovation (use of found objects to mark time and space) The Gleaners and I or her harrowing film about the life of an outsider (Vagabond) or the particularly imaginative film Faces, Places, in which she collaborates with an artist, JR, to visit various sites in France to shoot and display a photograph that captures the essence of the community, for example a shot of an enormous baguette sandwich that the villagers eat side by side (if I remember correctly). Her outreach to her subject is touching and inspiring, as is her focus on the marginal and the marginalized. Varda by Agnes should function as an open door to her other films rather than has a summary of her life’s work. A final note: Those lucky enough to watch the film on the Criterion Channel should check some of the commentary, notably the memories of Varda shared at the Telluride Festival, with panelists including her two adult children and her fan and friend Martin Scorsese.  

Lesotho (South Africa) is the setting for the unusual and entirely captivating film from the Lesotho filmmaker Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, This Is not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019). The film merits at least one revisit, as much of it is obscure on the literal level on a first viewing, at least my first viewing, but any obscurities or ambiguities are outweighed by the mysterious beauty of the setting and the community. The plot such as it is, in essence, centers on an octogenarian woman, Mantoa, played by Mary Twala Mhlongo, a well-known Lesotho actor (who died shortly after this film was completed) who anticipates a visit from her son working the SA gold mines, but instead receives word that he has died (we learn nothing more about his death), the latest in a long line or tragedies and losses she has suffered in her small, remote village. Over the course of the film she prepares herself and other villagers for her death - and for her burial in the small family or community cemetery - with this catch: the SA government plans to flood the entire village (and relocate the villagers) as part of a massive dam project; of course Mantoa organizes resistance to the project, with devastating results. What keeps the film alive is the sense of place and setting, the unusual cinematography, and terrific music both from the villagers and from highly dissonant score from Y Miyashita - it’s pretty much unlike any other film you’re likely to see. 

The American miniseries developed by David E. Kelley and Melissa James Gibson - which strangely is set in London and seems entirely British, who knew? - Anatomy of a Scandal (2022; based on a Sarah Vaughan novel) is worth seeing just to watch the courtroom drama, as the completely despicable MP James Whitehouse (our RI Senator oughta sue!), played by Rupert Friend, endures days in the dock after he’s accused of raping a much younger aide. It’s a he said/she said, which, unfortunately for James requires that he fess up to a 5-month consensual affair, and his lovely wife, played by Sienna Miller, endures the whole ordeal - and gives hubby some much-deserved grief after each court session. The series is engrossing, up to a point - as we watch the smarmy, self-satisfied James get skewered, but unfortunately the writers were stuck with a crappy plot that runs out of gas by about the half-way point and, if you keep watching (which we did) you’ll see one of the most ridiculous and preposterous resolutions (no spoilers) I’ve ever seen in an otherwise reasonably good crime/courtroom drama. Caveat emptor. 

Dennis Lehane’s Black Bird miniseries (2022, Apple) is one of the most successful dramatizations “based on a true story”- terrific and harrowing look at the life of a 20-something straight-arrow seeming guy (Taron Egerton as James Keene), nabbed as an Rx dealer and sentenced to 6 years - but the FBI makes him an offer: They will have his sentence commuted if he’ll go undercover into the prison for the “criminally insane” to get info and and wrench a information from a scary guy (Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall) who’s in jail for the murder of a young woman - and he’s suspected of killing about 20 other young women, whose bodies had never been found, leaving their families in grief. The series gives a brutal and uncompromising account of life in that Midwest prison, including various gangs inside the prison and a corrupt guard and the fear that at any moment Keene will be identified as an FBI plan (and the son of a retired police officer (Ray Liotta, in his final film). The series is tense all the way through - right to the final credits. 

Wim Wenders’s music-documentary Buena Vista Social Club (1999) is a totally enjoyable start to finish look at Cuban music - a project that began when the great American guitarist Ry Cooder, who’s been for many years a proponent of world music, travels to Cuba to try to connect with the great stars of traditional Cuban dance music, much of which had been performed by members of the eponymous club. Cooder soon learns that the club itself has long since passed away, but he and his team assiduously track down many of the great Cuban performers - men and women who at that time, inter 70s or older, had largely given up performing. Cooder et al brought these performers into an impromptu studio, recorded their work, and released a hugely successful compilation disk in the late ‘90s. Wenders joined the project and did on-camera interviews w/most of the singers - plus many fascinating location shots in Havana: worth seeing for the old American cars and the weathered grand boulevards and back by-ways - as well as the musicians themselves. The project culminated in a great concert in Amsterdam and then a find, triumphant performance before an enthusiastic crowd at Carnegie Hall. Totally fun for the great music and the strong, quirky personalities of the many artists. 

Stanley Donen’s spy-caper film Arabesque (1966, based on a novel by Gordon Cotlar) ) broke no new ground - familiar femme fatale plot with lots of twists - low-income Uni prof Gregory Peck, American England is called upon for his expertise in ancient languages to translate a small piece of parchment that for some reason has become of great interest to the PM of an Arab nation and a weird crime syndicate - don’t even try to follow the plot because who cares anyway?, it’s all about the exciting and imaginative chases (through Regents Park zoo, and aquarium, chases on horseback, pursued by a chopper, at the Ascot races, buildings blown up and demolished, Peck drugged and stumbling at night through English traffic, and more! - plus Sophia Loren in a sexy/comic/secret-agent role. Lot’s of fun - filmgoers in the 60s got the money’s worth even if, in the end, it amounts to not much but a Hitcirhcock homage: right down to the scene in which Peck and Loren are pursed by a harvester in a field of grain (North by Northwest anyone?) and, in Hitchcock fashion, the bit of cypher turns out to be a bit of nothing - just the “maguffin”that sets this madcap romp romping. Lots of fun; zero depth. 

Kenneth Branagh’s film Belfast (2021) is a portrait of the then-troubled city in the 1960s (with some framing shots of a Belfast as a peaceable, bustling city today) as experienced by a young boy - obviously a depiction of Branagh in his childhood - in a Protestant family living in the midst of the struggles; the film opens w/ a frightening street riot aimed at driving newly arrived Catholic families from the neighborhood. Some of the film is idyllic, as the young protagonist enjoys a life of close family ties - esp to the older generation - w/ lots of Irish humor, and much of the adolescent struggle (a crush on a classmate, whom we later learn is from a Catholic family) plus pressures on the family itself, of which the young boy is beginning to get a glimpse and a dawning appreciation, brought on by the father’s gambling habits and need for a more stable, unthreatened life - notably a move to London, which of course upsets the young boy deeply. There’s a lot of humor, much pathos, lots of street fighting and thuggish bullying of those - including the boy’s father - who refuse to take up arms - plus a good musical track with some fine selections from Van Morrison. Though the film ends with some sanctimonious moments, it’s overall a fine work that depicts a difficult childhood predictive of a culturally rich career in the arts - cf 400 Blows or Cinema Paradiso; will there be a sequel? 

But not for me … two completely different series about workplace culture: Industry, about a cohort of new temporary hires at a highly aggressive financial-services company, all vying to be retained come RIF (reduction in force) day, but (most of) the cohort are dislikable or amoral or both and there’s way too much totally gratuitous sex, drinking, smoking - without the counterweight of strong characters, interesting relationships, crises and resolutions. Ditto the much-praised surreal and enigmatic workplace of Severance, which for me was just far too creepy and arbitrary and I probably didn’t give it enough of a chance (2 episodes) but why would I want to visit by evening the fears of my nights? 

Catching up on recent watching of two productions, first the Skye Borgman’s 2022 3-part series, I Just Killed My Dad, is a good program (Netflix) for those like me who are true-crime buffs, and this has a twist in that it opens with the confession that you can see in the title - a young man calling the police to report on his own actions - and it seems the young man gets terrible treatment as ;aw enforcement assume thesis a murder or at least manslaughter face that they have to pin on the kid - but over the course of the drama we see how horrendously he was treated by his father and the misery of his life of near torture and of course we recognize before the cops and the DA’s team do that this kid is guilty of nothing. No spoilers. Second, I re-watched the terrific Romanian 2007 film 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days from Cristian Mungiu - and it’s a film everyone in an abortion-banning state should be forced to watch’ over the 2 hours or so, through a series of mostly long stills, and sometimes long tracking shots in which Mungiu conveys the struggle over few days of two college roommates in Romania, w/ its ridiculously strict anti-abortion laws (couldn’t happen here, could it?), and compromise, the suffering, the expense, the humiliation, the fear these 2 women brave together because of their friendship and commitment to women’s rights. The writing is wise and insightful, and the star s Anamaria Marinca as the fearless loyal friend. Topical, I’m sad to say, and enduring drama. 

Prolific, polished professional Ron Howard, who’s done about a movie a year, almost all of them big-budget and highly successful, since 1982, despite some wavering reviews comes through once more with the dramatic and technically challenging Thirteen Lives (2022), based (closely) on the rescue of 12 Thai kids and their soccer coach from a flooded dave in mountainous Thailand. Though most viewers will be familiar with the rescue, which received much international daily coverage, it still takes your breath to watch the rescue team in action against all odds and expectations. It had to be a huge technical challenge to do this film - many complex crowd scenes, re-creation of the terrifying mountain cave, re-enactment of the treacherous rescue process - you’ve with them all the way what seems an impossible task. If there’s a flaw to the movie it would be that no central character emerges - though that would be the “Hollywood” way the group effort with no individual hero is in keeping w/ the facts so, so be it. Also unfortunate - the Thai Seal rescue team and other local experts seem shunted aside and dependent on the expertise of a few British amateurs - a patronizing structure and not in keeping with current screen mores - but that’s the way it played out, and I think Howard and his team would have been lambasted had they restructured to story include a Thai hero, so more credit to them for staying with the facts of the docudrama. 

Yes, it’s pretentious; yes, it’s enigmatic; yes, it’s preposterous; yes, it’s French - but Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad (1961), screenplay by the equally pretentious/French Alain Robbe-Grillet - and yet, it’s still worth watching for pure weirdness. YOLO. The film - in which to my knowledge none of the characters have names - takes place in what looks to be one of the great chateaus now a grand hotel at the eponymous resort/recovery clinic; the characters wander through the innumerable long hallways and ballrooms, sometimes engaging in small gambling, at one point seeming to watch a play about the movie in which they’re participating, who knows? The story line such as it is involves a man who seems a woman whom he recognizes reminds her of their affair (her hawkish husband plays some kind of gambling or card trick on many of the guests) that began a year ago at this very hotel - and the woman insists that no, it never happened, she has no such recollection. So who’s right in this? What kind of sense does it all make? To me, not much - still fun to wander through these over-the-top decor - 2nd empire style? - and to walk in the garden that is done in extreme French style with all the greenery cut into rigid geometric patterns that look nothing like nature, guided throughout by dissonant organ music (I think that for a few moments some stringed instruments join in?). Obviously a lot of commentary exists on this sometimes incomprehensible film and maybe some of it will clarify Resnais’s intention, aside from bafflement, but many films that were startling and evocative in their time today look like curiosities - Godard and Truffault drove a stake into the heart this type of moody, languorous film with their new-wave cinema built upon by psychology, memoir, character, engagement, history, style, and commitment. 

The life and death of a troubled young woman in Varda's Vagabond

 Agnes Varda's 1985 film, Vagabond, is one of her best and about as close as she ever came in her rich career to a conventional narrative film: She establishes the story line in the first sequence as some field workers find in a ditch the body of a young woman; the police are called in to investigate a possible homicide, and the rest of the film is a re-creation of the woman - Mona's (in a terrific performance by Sandine Bonnaire) - recent life as a homeless vagabond. AV doesn't stick to the structure that she creates - we learn much more about Mon's life that we could possibly have learned from the people whose path she crossed and who are "interrogated" not so much by the police but by Varda's camera. In the end, Mona's life is still a blank - we know almost nothing about her family or early life; over the few months that the film covers she seems to be about 20 and living alone most of the time, hitching w. no obvious purpose or destination, picking up odd jobs and getting involved in a few minor scams, having and ditching a few relationships, undergoing abuse and rape and terrible conditions, begging and scrounging. She's like a thousand faces each of us has seen in various train stations and city squares and parks, a person most of us would pass by w/out a thought - yet she's no hero, never truly sympathetic, ungracious to those who do try to help her, a difficult and even dangerous person; one sequence, for example, shows her taken in by a sympathetic family trying to "live off the land" through farming and who offers her a place to stay and a start in the outdoor life that she seems to want - and to whom she becomes incredibly gruff and ungrateful. It's a sad film and a puzzling one, particularly in Varda's reluctance to fill in the blanks re Mona's personality and background. We see who she is, but how did she become that person? Childhood abuse? A struggle w/ mental illness? Some other malady? We don't really know, nor do we know how we would have behaved had Mona crossed our path. 

Varda's documentary film about a typical Paris street in 1975 - a world as it once was

 The late Agnes Varda is well known and remembered for her pioneering work in documentary film, in particular documentaries that also stand as personal essays in film about different aspects, eras, and interests in her life. One of the lesser-known of her documentary essays is Daugerreotypes (1975), which is film-essay about the street, rue Daugerre, in Paris 14th, on which Varda and her family lived in the 70s; it's a neighborhood far from the tourist attractions and the Right Bank hotels and restaurants - just a typical working-class street of its time, with apartments on the upper floors and retail businesses, for the most part, on street level. AV notes that all of the shops she visited in this film were w/in a few hundred feet of her own dwelling. So we see Paris as it was then, a city built upon thousands of small retail businesses; in this one stretch we see such places as a shop selling perfumes and lotions (and not in a kitsch/tourist/new age manner - just items that the elderly proprietor concocts), a small beauty salon, a tailor, a butcher, an accordion instructor (!), a driving school, and others. For our perspective 45 years later, it's obvious that no such neighborhood shops exist in Paris today (w/ the exception, probably, of the "convenience store" run then and today by immigrant entrepreneurs). For ex., in the perfume shop - how many people could possibly stop in during a business day? 10? 5? - and to buy what: a tiny jar of lotion for a few "centimes"? How could these people and their businesses survive? And I guess that they don't, really, but many of the proprietuers - almost tall of whom, we learn, moved to Paris as they set out on career and marriage, from small towns in the distant countryside - were probably helped by generous government support for the ill and elderly (just guessing there). Varga made a short follow-up film 30 years later, which I'll probably watch, but we can be pretty sure of what she'll see and show us: A street with upscale shops and offices and lots of car traffic. Today AV's film stands as a time capsule, giving us a glimpse into a world as it once was. 

The beautiful and moving penultimate Agnes Varda film: Faces, Places

The penultimate Agnes Varda film (2017) - Faces, Places (hats off to whoever came up w/ the English title; the Fr. is Visages, Villages) - is a totally enjoyable and surprising documentary about her public-art project, in which she joins forces w/ a 33-year-old (AV was pushing 90) French graffiti artist who goes by JR. The film shows how the two of them develop a concept and then bring it to fruition through public art: They roam the French countryside in JR's van, which looks, amusingly, like a bigger-than-life camera; they stop in various town squares, churches, restaurants, factories, meet the local people, and get permission to photograph them; the van has a supersized printer than turns the photos into huge blow-ups - literally the size of a country barn - that AV and JR and their team post on walls, sidings, water towers, etc. In the process they (and we) get to know the "villagers" and in each case the villagers learn more about their community and come together in awe - sometimes in tears - when they see the posted public art. Much of the beauty of the film involves the bonding - and sometimes petty spats and disappointments - as the 2 of them develop their ideas; all told, they get along beautifully, and each brings his/her genius to this project; they are kindred spirits, experimentalists and anthropologists, who push the boundaries of art, and we really get the sense that this film shows Varda handing on a legacy to the next generation of public artists. Most of all, it's highly unusual to see in a work of art the very process of the creation, from germination to flowering, so to speak. The film has many moments of humor (e.g., asked by one of the subjects how the two of them met, JR says "through a dating app" - as Varda bristles) as well as some real pathos, especially toward the end, as Varda increasingly recognizes that her career, and her life, are nearing the end (she died in 2019).

A French musical with a powerful feminist message - too bad the music's not so great

Agnes Varda's 1977 film, One Sings, the Other Doesn't, is more conventional in narrative structure than her earlier works - a tale of two women and the development of their friendship over time as they lead, for the most part, entirely separate lives, communicating mostly by post card. The movie has the easy flow of a road movie, but relatively little drama, which is OK, it makes the film feel more real and credible: These two women, stage-name Pomme ("apple," the singer; can't remember her birth name) and Suzette, could b like anyone most of us know, or at least knew of back in the 1970s. The film is of course a powerful statement on feminism, rare in commercial films of the era, and it's also a movie musical, with many of the scenes punctuated by songs composed and sung by Pomme and her backup group, The Orchids, as they tour the French countryside giving performances in small town squares (the troubadours reminded a little of Wim Wenders's Wrong Turn and Bergman's Seventh Seal). If only the songs were better! Their heart is always in the right place, but none is memorable (for some reason French popular music has never been adopted by American listeners); the Orchids sound vaguely like the Indigo Girls, but the IGs are much, much better; wondering here is Varda was influenced by her the musicals of her husband, Jacques Demy, but with a political/feminist message? In any event, the story line, essentially, is that the two women meet when Pomme is teenage student, and Suzette a young mother; S's husband commits suicide and P tries to help her with some funds to pay for an abortion in Switzerland. Nothing works out, and the women part ways - but both end up working actively on women's reproductive rights. They cross paths some 5 or so years later and initiate their correspondence, and eventually some visits. Pomme marries an Iranian man, and things start off well, but when they move to Iran (shot, I think, in a Paris suburb!) she feels oppressed, of course, and returns to France to pursue her singing career. Suzette, meanwhile establishes a women's health clinic and raises her two children; over time, the daughter becomes a more leftist-feminist than Mom, which shows that each generation pushes the previous. The movie is unflinching about the rights of women: the need for access to good health care and to the right to abort a pregnancy; the need to rectify legal inequalities about property and inheritance (who can forget Marlon Brando's boasts about the "Napoleonic Code" in Streetcar?). All told, a touch story which, despite some longueurs, is worth staying with till the end - it's not as creative or groundbreaking as some earlier Varda films but it carries a message and it carries its weight.

The weird and provocative tale of infidelity: Varda's Le Bonheur

Agnes Varda's 1965 film, Le Bonheur, is one of the weirdest you'll ever and sure to provoke a lot of discussion; it's not weird in any technical way - although Varda does evince a few innovative camera and editing techniques - not is the narrative hard to follow, but it's hard to figure out where to place your sympathies and antipathies and hard to determine whether than narrative - a very straightforward presentation of a marital 3-some makes any sense on the literal level and, if so, what's the point? What's Varda trying to say or show to us? It's almost impossible to discuss this film w/out spoilers, so I'll start out with the simple and then note where to stop reading if you haven't seen the film. The movie starts out as an almost absurdly idyllic portrayal of family happiness (le bonheur), with a very good-looking family of 4, two delightful toddlers, the mom a dressmaker/seamstress, the dad a carpenter/furniture maker; at the start they're all enjoying a day in the countryside, filmed with lush color and a Mozart soundtrack (though admittedly focused on his chamber music for winds, which can be just a little tense and unsettling). We see that the husband works for and with his beloved uncle, the kids are well cared-for, everything's great - so what's gonna happen to upset this idyll? The husband stops at the post office on some business and the pretty young clerk makes eyes at him, and eventually he returns the gaze, the 2 flirt a little, they go for a walk and have lunch together, she invites him to her new apartment (allegedly on a "job," putting up some shelves), and they begin an affair. Rather than causing him stress and guilt, he seems even more happy and content with life w 2 women. How long he he sustain this charade? (I've heart that there's one scene in which the 2 women appear, in a market of something; I didn't catch that). Spoilers coming: So on another countryside idyll, the wife, remarks that husband seems so happy, and he tells her, somewhat obliquely, that he's having this affair. It's hard to believe he would confess to this w/ such freedom and innocence. But, hey, this is France! And the wife just embraces him and seems to accept this - and we think, what a skunk, how can he do this to her, and why is she so acquiescent? They have sex, fall asleep in each other's arms, and when he wakes - she's gone. He takes the kids and goes to look for her and it turns out that she drowned herself in the nearby stream (there's some ambiguity here; it might be that she fell into the water - though most would not agree w/ that). Everything changes: the score becomes more ominous, the color saturation dims, husband goes into mourning, we don't for a second see him feel or express any remorse - though nobody seems to know why she would take her life (nor do I: Why didn't she start off by giving him hell?). And pretty soon, he goes back to the woman w/ whom he had the affair and she enters their family life and in the final moments we see the couple and the 2 cute kids enjoying another country idyll. So, what's the point here? That he can get away w/ the infidelity because he's so handsome? That this new relationship is obviously doomed, as both partners have shown that they're destructive and selfish? Varda takes no sides in this, but the ending is one of the many puzzles that viewers will have to unravel on their own.

A brave and original low-budget feature, Agnes Varda's first film

Agnes Varda's first film, La Pointe Courte (1954), is an early - maybe the first - example of New Wave cinema as well as a French version of the social-realism films characteristic of Italian cinema in the 50s (though I saw an interview w/ Varda in which she said she'd never seen any of the social-realism films). It's a double-genre film whose thin plot involves an attractive young couple early in their marriage; the man, for reasons we never learn, is visiting his home town, a fishing port on the Mediterranean, and his wife comes down by train from Paris to join him. The 2 of them spend long stretches of the film walking around the town and its environs discussing their on-again, off-again relationship. Should they break up, or remain together and return to Paris. "Spoiler": They return to Paris. As they wander about the town, we see lots of footage of the men and women of LPC (actually, the town is Sete) at work and play. There is much discussion of government inspectors on hand to ensure that the fishing waters are safe and that the fishermen don't take fish from outside the designated fishing areas. We never learn much about the source or outcome of these conflicts, but there are some terrific scenes in and around the boatyards as well as in among the village families with their joys and squabbles (one tiny thread of plot involves a teenage daughter who is dating against the will of her parents). Like the Italian neo-realist films, these element of LPC seem like documentary footage, and in fact AV did use the people of the village, all nonprofessional actors obviously, in all but the 2 lead role. There are some weird and innovative effects with sound - a strange musical score played I think by clarinets, and - as I learned from a Varda interview - unsual post-synch in which she kept all of the volume of the ongoing discussion between the married pair at the same volume level, so for example as they walk away from the camera down a long jetty we continue to hear their discussion at the same volume level: As they get farther away, we seem to follow them vocally but not visually. It's not a great film by any measure, but a brave and original low-budget feature that anticipated the films of Truffault (though without the humor), Godard (though w/out the politics), and Resnais (though without the self-consciousness).

Two films we abandoned

Started and abandoned two movies last night, for two different reasons. First tried "You Kill Me," a supposed mob comedy with a fairly elite cast (Ben Kingsley stars) - alcoholic mob enforcer in Buffalo screws up a job and the boss sends him to SF to dry out. Why San Francisco, he asks? Because I said so, boss replies, and that's about the level of dialog and credibility. Nothing (in the first half-hour) was believable in any way - it was just a script writer's lark, some guys trying to latch on to success of other mob comedies that actually had some wit and some characters you could believe in for 2 hours or even 20 seconds. Finally gave up when Kingsley takes a job in a funeral parlor (have we ever seen that before?) and comes on to a client maybe a third his age and she's pleased about that. A Hollywood, and the aged male titans of the realm! Second we started is the somewhat renowned Cleo from 5 to 7, Agnes Varda's best-known film, circa 1960. It's actually fun to watch some of the great sequences of Cleo walking along the streets of Paris, looking great (she's a pop star) as Paris looks poor and dirty, as it did then still recovering from the war. Varda's camera follows her in long takes, shot from above, to a jazzy soundtrack (also some Bizet?). Compared with movies of its era, it's much more documentary in look, filmed on location, almost improvisational at times, lots of rough edges, shot as if in real time (two hours), and focused on the woman's POV by a woman director - and yet, today, after a half-hour, it seemed tedious, the wit highly dated, the tension flaccid - an important film of its day and worth watching if you have a lot of time and patience, but not a film that stands up well today, sadly.

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.