She is a great director and a beautiful, lovable and wise woman, through and through. Her face is still framed by a cap of shining hair. Her eyes are still merry and curious. She is still brimming with energy, and in “The Beaches of Agnes,” you will see her setting up shots involving mirrors on the beach, operating her own camera or sailing a boat single-handedly down the Seine under the Pont Neuf, her favorite bridge.
And she has given us the most poetic shot about the cinema I have ever seen, where two old fishermen, who were young when she first filmed them, watch themselves on a screen. The screen and the 16mm projector itself are both mounted on an old market cart that they push through the nighttime streets of their village.
If you have never seen a single film by Agnes Varda, perhaps it is best to start with “The Beaches of Agnes.”
This is not an autobiography, although it is about her lifetime. She closes it by saying, “I am alive, and I remember.”
The film is her memories, evoked by footage from her films and visits to the places and people she filmed.
Although she’s in robust health, she accepts, as she must, that she’s approaching the end. She expresses no thoughts about an afterlife, and only one great regret about this one: that her husband, Jacques, and she could not complete the journey together, as they had planned.
She doubts she had seen 10 films by the time she was 25, when she made her first film. She had no theory and never desired any. She filmed as she felt, even in this first work that boldly brings together two story lines. Varda is sometimes called the grandmother, not the mother, of the New Wave.
Her husband, Jacques Demy, of course is most famous for “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” the sung-through musical, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Varda’s “Vagabond” won the Golden Lion at Venice. Their great collaboration came at the end, when Demy started to write down memories of his youth in Nantes, and Agnes said, “Jacques, do you want me to make a film of these?” Jacques said he did, and Agnes began immediately, that very day.
The story is in “Beaches.” Calling on friends and collaborators, she started to film with Demy at her side and everyone aware he was dying.
In “The Beaches of Agnes,” there is a sequence in which all of her children and grandchildren, dressed in white, perform a slow ballet on the beach, and Varda dances behind them, dressed in black.
Many times when we see her in the film, she is walking backward, as the film itself walks backward through her life, and as she perhaps sees herself receding from our view. But her films will not recede, and neither will Varda. There is no hint to suggest this will be her last film.
Varda’s films were made out of love of the art form and constructed by what fell to hand and seemed good to her. And now at 81, she can walk backward with more serenity than most of us, because she will not stumble.
“THE BEACHES OF AGNES.”
Not rated. 1 hour, 50 minutes. Documentary self-portrait. Written, directed by and starring Agnes Varda. Opens today at the Chez Artiste.
