Beaches of Agnes

Director: Agnès Varda
Cast: Agnès Varda, Andre Lubrano, Blaise Fournier

“I WASN’T much interested in reality” says Belgian-born film director Agnès Varda, talking about her teenaged self – and it is clear that in some ways not much has changed. When you enter Varda’s world in her autobiographical documentary The Beaches of Agnès, you have to leave your own notions of reality at the door and start seeing the world through Agnès’ eyes.

80-year-old Varda looks back over the important places, events and people in her life – and what a life it has been! As a child the director escaped war-torn Belgium with her family and lived on a boat in Sète, France; at 19 she ran away from studying art history in Paris and lived in Corsica for 3 months mending fishing nets; as a young woman she moved into a ramshackle studio where she began her passion for photography and film-making.  She went on to make her name as a director, screenwriter and producer as part of the French New Wave and married French director Jacques Demy.

Life and art were never separated for Varda. Throughout the documentary she brings in friends and actors to reconstruct moments of her life, while she looks on with interest at these versions of her memories. The film also draws on clips from her own films and documentaries. Shots of Varda revisiting her old haunts such as the Belgium beaches of her childhood are mixed with clips from her films and surrealist images of lovers on a beach, talking cartoon cats and Varda dressed as a potato at a recent exhibition of her work. It is a patchwork of memories –both real and surreal – with Agnes always in control; she selects exactly what she wants to remember and how she wants to remember it.

Acting as a guide through her own versions of reality, Varda is incredibly endearing. At 80 she is still active as an artist and film maker – vibrant and bright in purple clothes and an eccentric haircut, looking straight at the camera with her impish smile. One of the most lasting impressions we are left with of Varda is her love for the people around her – both her family and friends and the many people whose lives she has filmed and photographed; a couple she met in the states who have been in love for 45 years; her neighbours in Paris; the fishermen she filmed in La Pointe Courte. And so many of them have died now; there is a very moving scene where Varda scatters begonia petals at an exhibition of photos of her dead artist friends. Most touching of all is watching Varda revisit her memories of her late husband Jacques Demy, who died of Aids in 1989, including footage she filmed of him when he was dying. Her love for him is utterly real and incredibly moving.

Although a little too long and at times quite baffling, this is a fascinating documentary about a woman who seems to have lived many lives in one lifetime; as an artist, a lover, a mother and a political activist. Far as it is from a straightforward ‘realist’ documentary, the film is incredibly moving and deeply true.

Verdict: If you are looking for a straightforward night’s entertainment then this is not the film to see, but if you are willing to enter Varda’s surrealist, strange and deeply personal world then you will enjoy this film.

Four Stars