Pacific Sun - Movie Review - The Beaches of Agnes

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Agnes Varda in "The Beaches of Agnes"

The Beaches of Agnes
Whole star

Not Rated (2009) Publication Date Oct. 30, 2009

"Cinema is my home," says Agnes Varda, icon of the French New Wave, director of "Cleo from 5 to 7" (her 1962 breakout film), "One Sings, the Other Doesn't," and many other films, some rarely seen in the United States. In 2008, at nearly 80, Varda made the autobiographical film "The Beaches of Agnes." The film is anything but cut-and-dried chronology. Varda mixes footage from her films with old family photos and home movies, reenactments of episodes in her past, and her present-day life. She sails a boat up the Seine, visits the southern French town of Sete, where her family lived on a boat after escaping German-occupied Brussels, goes back to Hollywood where she became enchanted with the Black Panthers. Digression is the name of Varda's game. Sometimes the film becomes self-indulgent, but it's never dull.

Varda was in the forefront of the New Wave, whose male directors -- Resnais, Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, etc. -- tend to be better remembered. Varda worked with or knew everyone from Gerard Depardieu to Alexander Calder to Harrison Ford. Her political activism has included championing tolerance and women's causes. And she married the decidedly non-New Wave director Jacques Demy, creator of the magical "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg." (A surprising revelation in "The Beaches of Agnès ": Demy's death at 59 was caused by AIDS.)

With her Dutch-boy haircut--the same as it's been for decades, but now dyed a color verging on purple--Varda is a roly-poly aging pixie, full of energy and not a bit sentimental. She loves the ocean, and she also loves the courtyard outside her Paris home, where some of the film's most enchanting scenes are shot.

A caveat: "Beaches of Agnès" is for people who know and love film, or who love film and would like to know more.

Not rated. 1 hour, 50 minutes.

- Renata Polt