Restored… and digitised! My French is getting so french.

Is that the most French tableau ever?

Untrue!

This is a wonderful short — they’re basically showing us all these fabulous French castles, and the voiceover talks about how they were created and what their significance are — but the movie doesn’t really explain why it exists. It just seems so random and whimsical: It’s a series of gorgeous shots of gorgeous castles with gorgeous models modelling in front of them — but why?

It’s mysterious. And great. I want visit all these castles.

Ó saisons, ó châteux. Agnès Varda. 1958. ⚅

This is a short included on the first disc in the Criterion Varda box set… and it’s the only thing listed (except the main feature), but there’s a whole bunch of documentaries included, too. It’s like a cornucopia, but it’s gonna take months to watch the box if all disks are like this.

Varda uses CGI extensively here…

The performances are fine, but the whimsy seems forced, and it seems more like a way to play with CGI elements than anything else.

Les 3 boutons. Agnès Varda. 2015. ⚂

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. ⚂