The Beaches of Agnès

The story of a life and its devotion to cinema and people flows so fascinating that you don't want it to end and you travel with it to your own memories. Thank you Varda for passing through this world.

"A little old lady, pleasantly plump" did a great job of enabling us to see her revisiting her own life. Fortunately, she had a lot of help from her personal collection of photographs, home videos & movies. She lived a full life and was a pioneer not just for French New Wave Cinema but also because of her involvement in many human rights issues. A few scenes were a bit too zany for my taste but then again I can't claim to understand the mind of such a great auteur!

The French movie Les plages d'Agnès was shown in the U.S. with the title The Beaches of Agnès (2008). It was directed by Agnès Varda. This is a summing up movie, completed by Varda when she was 80 years old. It's really a semi-documentary, but it includes surreal elements that Varda interweaves with commentary, historical movie clips, and direct discussions with the us, the audience. If you're an Agnès Varda fan, this movie will be perfect. If you've never seen a Varda film, it may not make much sense. Even so, it's interesting, funny, and poignant. If you're not sure, take a chance on it. We saw the movie at the excellent Dryden Theatre in the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. It was part of an Agnès Varda retrospective, cosponsored by Rochester Institute of Technology and the Eastman Museum. It will work better on the large screen, but it will be satisfactory on the small screen as well.

I am Making my way through personal documentaries and this is by far my favorite. It is so cinematic and unexpected and special. It took to me through my Own life and back again in a way that was very meaningful. In the revisiting of memories and locations I also was revisiting my own- a great example of how something so specific can make a work of art that is so universal. Anyone making a personal film should watch this as it was a beautiful beautiful watch and the kind of movie you could watch 1,000 times and always see something new. A master of the documentary art form indeed! Indelible !!

Taking a look at the listings for the HOME cinema in Manchester recently, I was happily surprised to find they were screening a title by film maker Agnes Varda. Having found Varda's Les Creatures (1966-also reviewed) to be a jewel,I got set to watch the tide come in with Agnes. View on the documentary: Reflecting on her life with mirrors spread across the beach, directing auteur Agnes Varda introduces a deeply personal atmosphere as she lays bare her life,from overlapping photos of her childhood which detail her family fleeing to France as signs of the country falling into Occupation appeared, to the cheerful friendships she made with the likes of Jim Morrison and Zalman King (who appears on camera for a chat with Varda!) Discussing a number of her past works which is layered over as narration to rare behind the scene footage, Varda reveals that she still has a wickedly playful side burning bright, with dips into surrealism sparked by fluid French New Wave camera moves into re-enactments of her first short,and jolts of dissolves to sudden shots of bare flesh. Buying cards that include one from her own works at a flea markets, Varda beautifully makes the love she has for her late husband Jacques Demy be the heart of the film, with home movies of the couple, heartbreaking footage of Varda paying tribute to Demy at the opening of her latest artwork, and discussing with cast members from the Demy bio-pic she made about how ill he looked on the set,and the taboo around AIDS in this period,as Varda watches the tide go out.

I was fortunate to catch (October 30, 2009 in SF) "The Beaches of Agnès" aka "Les Plages d'Agnès" 2008, in French with English subtitles. Agnès Varda is 80 (in 2008) and still so lively, creative, imaginative, giving us delightful reminiscing of The New Wave film period, including the young and the old. What a filmmaker, cinematic lover, unique lady, she is. Besides being a retrospective look at Varda's cinematic life (so far), the film also serves as a loving dedication to the close to 30 years she shared with her husband Jacques Demy - the fabulous w-d-filmmaker who gave us the popular French films entirely sung musically: "The Young Girls of Rochefort" 1967 and "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" 1964 (Catherine Deneuve was in both of these two gems). If you like movies, film history, graphic design, visual play on imagery (or affiliated to none of the above), you will (still) feel akin to Varda's 'Beaches' whether you thoroughly understands French, speaks the language, been to Paris-France, or not. She has delivered a cinematic journey of going through the various phases of her life, experiences in film-making, and added her unique stamp of Agnès Varda sensibility. It's a good place to be and 'tis fun to hang around with her. As my favorite Emily Dickinson epigram says: Delight has no Competitor, so it is always most. Yes, Agnès Varda is alive and well and still full of humor, bemused or otherwise - a fantastic spirited woman, ever the innovative-discovery eye afresh, so full of wisdom, be it wistful or witty. This film is a great companion piece for viewing with her loving remembrance of Demy: Jacquot De Nantes (1991), which is in Black & White, and Color, documented the hometown childhood origin which grew into the lifelong cinematic passion of Jacques. Another enjoyable Varda-Demy film, anytime. There is an accessible official site USA at "cinemaguild.com/beachesofagnes" and the trailer at "cinemaguild.com/beachesofagnes/trailer.html". Looks like DVD is available, released on March 2, 2010.

It's not too often a filmmaker will give us a full and unambiguous autobiography on film; if we find out about who they are, he or she will bring themselves into the art that is ostensibly other stories. Agnes Varda looks back on her life using cinema and it is among the most unique things I've ever seen - though it is not inconsistent with many films she has made before (The Gleaners and I comes to mind) as far as her life being inextricably and most often joyfully being connected with her work. This doesn't mean she doesn't shy away from the pain as well; the parts regarding Jacques Demy in his final years are somber and tender. Pure, unadulterated imagination, heart, empathy, a light yet wholly potent surrealism, a seemingly endless connection to other people, art, photography, and of course those cats (including an eccentric cameo by Chris Marker). I feel like I got a lifetime in just a little under two hours. And how about her cardboard car that she tries to park into her tiny garage! And it's the kind of wonderful and priceless piece of autobiography that has digressions (one of which about Jim Morrison). It may help to see at least a few of her films before going into this, but even if you only have a cursory knowledge of film history or Demy or what have you, it's still effective and affecting as a story that contains many stories and is about getting us to see the world as vibrantly and daringly as she does. As life changes and the world goes through other developments, the beaches stay the same.

In a revealing and playful mood, filmmaker Agnes Varda narrates her own filmed autobiography in The Beaches of Agnes. The film begins with Varda, now 82, setting up mirrors on the beach with the sounds of one of her mother's favorite works, Schubert's Unfinished Symphony in the background Though she asserts that "Today, I'm playing a little old lady, talkative and plump," she looks anything like a little old lady. The film re-creates her life with childhood memories that take her back to homes she knew as a child in Brussels and the city of Sete where she made her first film at the age of 26. The film is not a dry documentary, filled with reminiscences of people we never heard of. It is a work of art in itself, a celebration not only of her life, but of all life. Along the way, Varda takes us to Los Angeles (one of her favorite cities in which she lived) where she talks about and shows photos of her former husband Jacques Demy, who she announces died of AIDS in 1990, Jane Birkin, Chris Marker (dressed as a cartoon cat) and even poet, singer Jim Morrison. Varda began as a photographer and we see an example of her photos from a long time ago. While the film documents Varda's films beginning with her first Le Pointe Curé in 1956 to the present day and the first appearances on film of Gerald Depardieu, Phillipe Noiret, and Harrison Ford, she also discusses in detail and shows excerpts from her most popular films including Cléo from 5 to 7, Le Bonheur, Vagabond, The Gleaners and I, and her documentary tributes to her husband. Rather than an egoists attempt to enhance a reputation with big events in which she participated, the film looks at small things like the uniform she had to wear in Vichy France and a scene at an outdoor flea market where the director finds cardboard cutouts of herself and other filmmakers with their works listed on the back. But there is much more. With actors dramatizing important memories from her life, The Beaches of Agnes is filled with the people, including her two grown children, places and events, including her trips to Cuba and China that contributed to her personal growth and made her the lively and vibrant person she is today. She closes the documentary by saying, "I am alive, and I remember." While we are still alive, we will remember her.

Agnès Varda presented us in this autobiographical movie with her memories of a life devoted to the cinema and not only. She does that in powerful and beautiful images supported by a brilliant, witty and sensitive commentary. In this movie we can see references to several of some of the best Varda's films such as La Pointe Courte, Cléo de 5 à 7 and Le Bonheur, with images, and to some of the greatest and more important figures of French cinema such as her husband Jacques Demy to begin with and also Godard, Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, Jane Birkin and others. The cut is very intelligent and effective in visual terms combining the present and the past sometimes in simultaneous images with a special effect here and there. A masterpiece indeed.

French New Wave film-maker and photographer Agnes Varda takes a look back at her life, her career, and her loves. She tells her story mostly to camera, now 80 years old - "a little old lady, pleasantly plump" - and is still full of life and wonder. She starts with her time studying art in Ecole du Louvre, the charms of the small town near Paris where she made her first film, her relationship with and love of fellow film- maker Jacques Demy, and the beginning of the French New Wave movement, and moves on to her re-location to and seduction by Hollywood, the hippy movement, her neo-Feminist views that influenced her films, and her move into photography. Most of all though, she reminisces about the eccentrics she encountered, and the photographs that immortalise her memories. Varda seems extremely keen to cement these memories either by recording them on her ever-present video-camera, or by taking pictures. It is important to remember, it seems. She uses a number of different artistic techniques in the film. Her wonder and love of the beaches are evident at the beginning as she lays out a number of old photographs in the sand that blow in the wind, as she reminisces. She also lays out a number of mirrors facing all angles and directions, creating some fascinating images. Varda has a clear love for art, and sees it in everything she does. As she watches a man gaze out to sea, she describes him as being like Ulysses. It is clear that it is Varda herself who is like Ulysses - life has been an epic journey for her, in which she has encountered many friends and characters, and the sea is like her life, vast and beautiful, but fading into the distance. What is so joyous about the film is how wonderfully sentimental it is. It is not patronising or forceful by overplaying sad music or having Varda cry into the camera, but instead the beauty and the melancholy are in her words, and how she describes the first time she met Demy, or how she turned a run down alley full of empty picture frames and overhanging trees into a beautiful gateway. It is so beautifully sad yet ultimately uplifting. Varda is a wonderful and intelligent lady who's love of art and creativity shines through what appears to be a short woman with a strange haircut. Less a documentary, and more of an exploration of art, love and life seen through the eyes of a woman who has lived through the very heart of it. Lyrical, beautiful, and reminds you of the true joys to be found in cinema. www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com