Varda by Agnès: The late, legendary filmmaker's lively manifesto shows the substance behind the feminist 'meme'
By Liam Lacey
Rating: A
“Nothing is trite if you film people with empathy and love,” says Agnès Varda in Varda by Agnès, a manifesto that handily advocates for both better people and more insightful filmmaking.
The documentary is both Varda’s last testament and, paradoxically, a perfect introduction to the work of the Belgian-born filmmaker, who died in March at the age of 90, a month after the film made its debut at the Berlin film festival. Charm, humanity and a passel of filmmaking insights are all here, rewarding both the dedicated fans and newcomers to Varda, who achieved a new level of public profile in her last decade.
Agnès Varda: The Lioness in Winter
Because Varda’s output remained daring and lively - and because of the consciousness of under-representation of women filmmakers - Varda emerged in the last couple of years as an iconic figure of feminist filmmaking (a “meme” suggested Guy Lodge in his Variety article).
The small, plump talkative older woman (her description), sporting a purple and grey bowl-cut hair-do, she suddenly seemed to be everywhere: the first woman to win an honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2017, the oldest person ever to compete for an Oscar with her documentary, Faces, Places (2018), as well the first woman to win an honorary lifetime achievement Academy Award.
Varda by Agnès is based on a series of lectures – and filmed excursions – in which the director discusses her technique and various fascinations over a six-decade-plus career, from the pre-French New Wave of the early 1950s to the present.
The film begins with Varda, sitting in a director’s chair in a large opera house, speaking to a group of fans and film students. She lays out things clearly from the start, dividing filmmaking into three parts – inspiration (the idea), creation (the work) and finally, sharing, or reaching audiences.
Furthermore, she divides her work between her “analog” 20th-century period, and her “digital” 21st century reinvention as a visual artist.
There are looks back at her debut, La Pointe Courte (1954), hailed by some critics as the first “real” French New Wave film. We get an account of the guerilla style approach she took to shooting her most famous film, Cleo de 5 a 7 (1962), a portrait of a young Parisian singer awaiting her biopsy results. There’s her memorable description of Le Bonheur, a drama about a married man who desires to “increase his happiness” by taking a mistress, as “a beautiful summer peach with a worm inside.”
Several times, we see Varda, away from the auditorium, out in the world: She meets up and reminisces with Sandrine Bonnaire, who was 17 when she starred in Varda's Vagabond (Sans Toit Ni Loi). Varda also talks about flops – including One Hundred and One Nights (1995), an all-star allegorical film celebrating the 100th anniversary of cinema. Though the film failed, she says, she’s proud that she got Robert De Niro to speak phonetic French and had him appear in a boat with Catherine Deneuve.
The film’s second half, the period of her late career resurgence, begins with her documentary, The Gleaners and I (2000) – a portrait of people who live off other’s refuse, which she considers as her personal philosophy. We also see examples of Varda’s work as an installation artist, demonstrating other facets of her habitual creativity.
Among her works is a tomb for her dead pet cat, a permanent installation at the Cartier Foundation in Paris, which is particularly beloved by children.
There is also extensive use of material from her 2008 film, The Beaches of Agnes, which, similarly, offered a career summing up, and is a natural companion piece to this film. A constant theme in her work is the idea of interface and collage, the juxtaposition of the invented with the real, the documentary and fiction, or, in one of her favourite metaphors, the meeting of sea and the shore, the image that appropriately ends the film.
Varda by Agnes. Directed by Agnes Varda. Varda by Agnes can be seen at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.