LES PLAGES D’AGNÈS (2008)

Posted by Daniel Metz

Agnès Varda is often called the grandmother of the French New Wave. While I think that is an exaggeration, I do think she deserves credit as one of the foundational French directors during a period of questioning and challenging the dominant “quality” cinema of the time. As a matter of fact, I think Varda belongs to the Left Bank movement that also brought us Alain Resnais and Chris Marker. Nevertheless, her film Cleo from 5 to 7 is a masterpiece very much in the style of Truffaut or Loius Malle, if not JLG.

I don't remember what's going on here.

I usually don’t devote too much time for biographical information, but after all, this film is an autobiography. The Beaches of Agnès is an essay film about the complications inherent in dealing with the past. Agnès Varda addresses the camera and draws attention to the crew and the process of making a strange documentary while simultaneously allowing herself the opportunity to reminisce on her past.

And a great past it was! She discusses her relationship with Jacques Demy, her interactions with the New Wave, the American Hippy Movement, the Women’s Lib in France, and other key cultural events. She has been a filmmaker for more than fifty years, and she has met a lot of fascinating figures.

Varda Re-enacting a car manuever in one of the film's funniest scenes.

The film is a somewhat indulgent exploration of director/subject Varda, focusing on the high points in her career (La Pointe-Courte, Cleo from 5 to 7, Vagabond, The Gleaners and I) and allowing Varda to establish elaborate set pieces like a beach full of mirrors and a giant tarp whale. This could be bad, except Varda plays an emotion of pure class: gratitude. Varda’s gratitude to have the life she has had, with the people she has met, is a refreshingly new and pleasant tone to see a documentarian take.

Varda spent the first 10 minutes setting up mirros on the beach.

Varda’s topic in this film is the complication of telling the past. She constantly goes on digressions. I got the overwhelming feeling that sometimes spatial linearity is not the same as temporal linearity. We keep going back, so it isn’t easy to tell a story for east to west, north to south, etc. Chew that over for a little while.

She also constantly plays with different film stocks and even with video, also mixing in archival footage with re-enactments (with old and new movie technology), affecting the way we remember the past and especially the filmic past. It is not overdone, and adds to the subtle paradoxes inherent in all autobiographies.