Agnes Varda, 81 years old, is considered the Grandmother of the French New Wave film movement. Belgian-born and starting as a still photographer, she has been making films for more than a half-century, counseling other filmmakers and being a vital part of the seminal group that included Alan Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard and, of course, Jacques Demy, to whom she was married for 28 years. "The Beaches of Agnes," an autobiographical and philosophical statement, is often self-promoting, but she's entitled. She also has brought forth an entertaining and fascinating movie that opens today.
Originally named Arlette, she changed her name to Arles as a teenager, crediting the French town in which she says she was conceived, then settled on Agnes when she was 18. Born in Brussels, she and her family moved to France ahead of World War II, spent most of the war living on a sailboat moored on the Mediterranean.
The ocean always has had a strong influence on Varda, and the new film opens with her setting up mirrors on a beach ("old, spotty mirrors," as she describes them) and photographing people and then surf and sand through and around the mirrors.
A free spirit and a political radical, Varda recalls a lot about her life and her great love for Demy. She speaks of him with considerable emotion as she shows clips of him in his final days, when illness controlled him, and of times when their relationship was at its most intense and loving. There also is discussion of the people with whom she worked, in Europe, Hollywood, China and other places. Demy often used Catherine Deneuve in his films, her luminous beauty showing even in casual photographs, and Varda has old clips from her films as well, including a very young Gerard Depardieu.
And she tells a splendid story of wanting to use Harrison Ford, an unknown, in a movie with Anouk Aimee, but being told by a Hollywood producer that Ford had no talent and would never be successful.
Her children, Rosalie and Mathieu, still are an integral part of her life, and the people she knew cover the entire entertainment and art spectrum, and either live or in archive footage, we visit with Alexander Calder, Jane Birkin, Robert De Niro, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, Jim Morrison, even James Rado and Gerome Ragni, who wrote "Hair."
As Varda talks, we learn a lot about movie-making and the many people with whom she worked, but we learn even more about a woman whose creative light never has dimmed and whose enthusiasm for life never has waned.
Opens today at the Plaza Frontenac
–Joe