email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

VENICE 2008 Out of competition / France

Long live Varda

by 

“A little old woman – a wanderer and a chatterbox – who talks about her life”. This is how Agnès Varda introduces herself in the first scene of her documentary The Beaches of Agnès [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, which offers an intimate portrait of the director (one of the main names associated with the New Wave), but is much more than a simple cinematic autobiography.

The beaches of the title “are those of the North Sea, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic”, the filmmaker commented. Featured are Ostend, Sète (where they have named a street after her, to thank her for her debut short La Pointe courte, an accurate portrayal of the life of the town’s fishermen) and Venice Beach: “The most perfect places: I find mountains ridiculous, as I do those people who think that life’s an upward climb”, Varda added.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

One hour 40 minutes isn’t long to take stock of 80 years of life and a career spanning over 50 years: her childhood in Belgium, her arrival in Paris, her debut as a photographer, her friendship with Chris Marker, her meeting with Jacques Demy (her life companion, at the centre of the film’s most moving and reverent scenes). The documentary also looks at the international success of Cléo from 5 to 7, the United States, Varda’s political engagement (“I’m a woman of the Left, but have always remained outside political parties: I led a long battle for joyful feminism”).

There are also the faces of friends who have passed away, but come back to life in Varda’s photos on display in the Pope’s Palace in Avignon: “It triggered a powerful emotion, seeing all those photos together, and thinking that the subjects are almost all dead, from Gérard Philipe to Philippe Noiret”, explained the director.

However, the film, bolstered by irony (and sometimes self-criticism, such as when she recalls the flop, A Hundred and One Nights of Simon Cinema), is full of narrative invention and is anything but tragic: “I made the film to tell my children (costume designer Rosalie Varda and actor Mathieu Demy, ndr) about the highs and lows of my journey: this is the wish of an old woman, not a dying one”.

The creative vitality of the director of Without Roof or Rule – which won the Golden Lion in 1985 at Venice, where her latest film screens out of competition today – is undisputed. The Beaches of Agnès also sees the director look back at previous chapters in her filmography. But this is done without any celebratory intent or attempts at comprehensiveness: “I only chose the clips that helped me explain what I wanted to explore in my work, and I left out the other titles”.

Written, lensed and edited by Varda (who is naturally also its star), the documentary was co-produced by the filmmaker’s company Ciné-Tamaris and Arte France Cinéma, with backing from Canal+ and the National Film Centre. International sales are being handled by Roissy Films.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from Italian)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy