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Varda par Agnès

OK, I’ve completed all the box sets I had going… so I can start a new one!

And I had to choose the Agnès Varda box set from Criterion simply because it has an oddball format and pokes out of the shelf I have the unseen movies on.

Makes sense to me!

Oddly enough (or perhaps not) the box sets starts with a film from 2019 — which is basically a talk Varda gave to present her movies. So we start the box set with an introduction… I wonder whether she made this with the box set in mind?

This isn’t just Varda talking with clips from movies — we get extensive bits from other “behind the scenes” movies Varda has done before, but it’s presented as if it’s part of the talk.

So it’s a kind of fictionalised presentation? Very strange genre.

Hey… that’s a different venue…

Oh, there’s a lot of different venues — she did a tour?

I dunno… I don’t think this movie quite works? Varda had a really interesting career, but this manages to make it seem kinda boring: It’s just one thing after another — first I did this, then I did this — without really telling us why we should be interested.

Yeah, that tracks: It’s just kinda boring. Which is something that Varda’s movies never are, usually.

(Well, she died a couple of weeks after the premiere, so perhaps that influenced the scores…)

Heh heh.

The final 20 minutes are really good, though, so let’s go with:

Varda by Agnès. Agnès Varda. 2019.

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