Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Filmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of the French new wave, turns the camera on herself with this unique autobiographical documentary. Composed of film excerpts and elaborate dramatic re-creations, Varda's self-portrait recounts the highs and lows of her professional career, the many friendships that affected her life and her longtime marriage to cinematic giant Jacques Demy.
Agnès Varda's self-portrait is a genuinely singular work — playful, melancholic, and structurally inventive, with mirrors on beaches and elaborate staged memory-tableaux that feel utterly unlike any other documentary. The cinematography is exceptional, blending archival footage with Varda's characteristically tender and painterly visual sense. Novelty is high because the film's conception is unmistakably hers alone. The 'plot,' such as it is in a non-linear autobiographical essay, is warmly engaging but loosely structured, earning a solid above-average rather than exceptional mark. The ending is moving but not dramatically climactic in a traditional sense. Acting is not a primary category here given the documentary form, though Varda herself is a charismatic and disarming screen presence.