This is a documentary about the shops on the street Varda lived in — and as usual with Varda, it’s very wistful and emotional. These hand-written signs… these are shops you know won’t last much longer — they’re remnants of an earlier time that would soon disappear. So it’s a movie full of nostalgia for something that hasn’t disappeared yet.

This is not one of those documentaries where you drop by with a camera un-announced. Everybody’s been warned, and are putting their best foot forward — everybody’s got their hair done up nicely, and are presenting their wares, so you get tableaux like this…

(But I’m guessing Varda herself arranged some of this scenery, which makes it even more artificial.)

Right:

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry for this scene. And I have to ask myself if my life is somehow similar to her.

It’s a moving documentary — the couple in the parfumerie is just heartreaking… but some of the things Varda does here doesn’t quite work. They’re too artificial — like the scene with the magician? I just found that really boring, but that may be just me — I’ve got an antipathy towards magic… But moreover, the forced parallels between the stage magic and the “real” stuff was groan-worthy.

She already had gold with the less staged sequences! They’re ⚅ sequences, but I’m going with:

Daguerréotypes. Agnès Varda. 1975. ⚄

This is pretty amusing. I’m not really digging the colour grading on this (everything except the reds is given a greyish desaturated treatment), but it’s engaging.

So this is a comedy about a young criminal in Germany trying to avoid getting sent to Senegal by marrying some German… I guess it’s a screwball comedy?

Heh heh heh classic. It’s basically the same plot as the Sandra Bullock vehicle The Proposal, if I remember correctly… Or the Andie MacDowell movie Green Card? But with the twist that he marries a guy (and neither are gay).

Gotta adjust the decor.

This is not gonna end well! I think there’s gonna be a really depressing third act…

I think I kinda guessed right — it’s not as depressing as it could have been, but it’s pretty depressing. Gotta have that third act that All Serious or it’s not a Proper Movie.

In a way, it’s a surprisingly traditional movie — it reiterates the plot from the previous movie in that you absolutely can’t cheat the system (if I remember those previous movies correctly). And it also does some odd choices — like not having the guy try to get a job or something (no matter where he is).

The first two thirds of this movie are a lot of fun, but the third act, man…

Toubab. Florian Dietrich. 2021. ⚃

I’m guessing this is a Hong Kong movie? I really haven’t seen that many films from Hong Kong, for some reason or other…

Wow, this is so goofy… I immediately thought that this looked very 80s, but it can’t be. But it’s got that indie 80s fuck off attitude, that audacity — it’s very Aki Kaurismäki, in other words. But with judo and stuff.

So much product placement.

I laughed, I cried, and I was fascinated. It’s just so full on — it commits completely to its concept, and you get pure cinema. It’s all emotion.

I mean, I’ve seen more than a couple of movies in my life, but this seems totally original. But then again, I’ve not seen that many movies from Hong Kong, and perhaps this is just what movies are there?

It’s a masterpiece, anyway. And very silly. I was totally riveted. It looks gorgeous, the performances were so much fun, and it’s just totally original. And now I want to watch all of Johnnie To’s movies.

柔道龍虎榜. Johnnie To. 2004. ⚅