Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
An unpredictable documentary from a fascinating storyteller, Agnès Varda’s last film sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls "cine-writing," traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing.
Varda's final film is a singular act of self-reflection and artistic autobiography, unfolding with the playful, essayistic freedom that defined her entire career. The cinematography—mixing archival clips, lecture-hall performances, and intimate handheld moments—is characteristically inventive and deeply personal, earning a top mark. Novelty is high because the film's form is unmistakably Varda's own: no one else could have made this exact meditation on 'cine-writing,' memory, and creative process. The 'plot,' such as it is in a documentary of this kind, flows engagingly but unevenly across its retrospective structure, landing above average rather than exceptional. The ending, while poignant given her subsequent death, is somewhat diffuse as a formal conclusion rather than a culminating statement. 'Acting' here means Varda's own presence as narrator and performer—warm, witty, and magnetic, though the supporting voices and archival material vary in weight.