Criterion finally lets us see both the early and the late films of the French New Wave great, Agnes Varda.

Varda is quite an interesting filmmaker, somebody I’ve been anxious to explore for a few years now.  With this collection, I was finally able to see her first film La Pointe Courte which hasn’t been available on any format previously as well as three of her other films: Cleo from 5 to 7, Le Bonheur, and Vagabond.

The films:

La Pointe Courte is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in Varga, and it was her first film.  It contemplates and portrays many of her stylistic themes: a blur between documentary and fiction in a way not dissimilar from Italian Neo-Realism, a photographic sense of composition, and a careful attention to subtlety in her characters and their complex relationships.  While on the surface this is a story of a troubled marriage, the real subject is perhaps the small fishing village that is the setting; nearly everyone in the cast besides the husband and wife are non-actors, just people who live in the village who play themselves.  In a sense, it is a planned documentary with a rocky marriage subplot that teases out the political and social problems that the village faces.

Cleo from 5 to 7 is unquestionably Varda’s most famous film, and it is the one which most closely places her in the French New Wave camp with Truffaut, Godard, and several others.  Here, the story is more clear: a semi-famous pop singer, Cleo, is waiting (from 5 to 7) to find out whether she has cancer.  The film explores her character, largely through a recurring theme of looking: Cleo is always looking at other people, and looking at how they look at her.  It is about viewing and being viewed, and how that affects us when death is looming over our heads.

Le Bonheur comes three years later, a film about love and the love affair in a modern age.  It is a surreal, somewhat disturbing film, especially considering that the title means ‘happiness’.  It is a provocative film that probes the moral consequences of love.  This is also the first color film in the collection: always the photographer at heart, Varda makes use of the color in interesting ways, giving the film a “deceptively cheery palette” (back of the box) that belies its somewhat dark subject matter.

Vagabond is the final film in the collection.  It was made in 1985, and yet, rather than simplifying her themes and bowing to more typical stories and styles, Varda seems to have continued to push and develop her own style even further in the thirty-one years since her first film.  It is the extremely engrossing tale of a female drifter, Mona, who bums around the French countryside for no obvious reason.  She meets and has relationships with many different, interesting people, all of which influence her in some way or another and all of which are changed by her in some way.  As with all of Varda’s films, it is unbelievably beautifully shot, again in color this time; each shot could literally be framed and displayed as a phenomenal photograph.  This is perhaps her most accesible film, largely because the story is so interesting and impossible not to care about, and because it explores such interesting themes.

Features:

As with all good Criterions, you get a whole bunch of features.  But are they worth the price?  With La Pointe Courte there isn’t much: just a new video interview with Varda and an excerpt from a French TV show that she was interviewed on.  However, this can be overlooked simply for the fact that before this DVD it was literally impossible to see this film unless you knew someone who owned an original 35 mm print.  Cleo has a little more in terms of features, including three shorts, a documentary featurette on the making of, a gallery of paintings that inspired the creation of the title character, and another French interview show with Varda and (of all people) Madonna talking about the film.  Le Bonheur has similar features: several shorts, both documentary featurette style and fiction.  One of the shorts on this disc, Du cote de la cote, is perhaps my favorite feature of the whole collection: it is a wonderful, inspiring short film that explores and satirizes a French tourist trap.  The final film, Vagabond, includes a few more shorts, although unfortunately there are no fiction shorts on this disc–I was looking forward to seeing more of Varda’s modern work in this form, so that was a little disappointing.  On top of that, you of course get the gigantic booklet that comes with Criterions: this one includes one or two essays on each film, both by Varda and by film scholars.

Conclusion:

Worth it, but check out a movie or two first. With the $99.95 list price, you don’t want to be disappointed.  So I would suggest neflixing Cleo or Vagabond first.  If you enjoy them, and you’re interested in filmmaking as an art, then it’s worth it.  Not to mention how great it looks on a shelf!

For: French New Wave enthusiasts.  Photographers.  Criterion obsessors.  People with money to spend.

Not for: The impatient.  Those who don’t want to read subtitles.  Those who want to hold on to their money.

• Buy: @ Amazon , @ Criterion.com
• Watch: Youtube Trailer