Vagabond (Agnes Varda, 1985)

I'm working my way piece by piece through Criterion's Agnes Varda box set, and although Vagabond (or, its French title, Without Roof or Rule, which I actually like better) doesn't quite live up to the promise of Le Bonheur, it's quite a good film in its own right. Sandrine Bonnaire, whom I loved in A Nos Amours, plays Mona (formerly Simone), a young drifter about whom we know almost nothing. We never learn about her past, or what (except hating life as a secretary) made her abandon normal life and live on the road; this is a breath of fresh air, as most films would have become overly bogged down in the past and sentimentalization of the road. There's no sentamentality here; the first scene in the movie is Mona frozen to death after sleeping in a ditch. She's never identified, and is buried in a potter's field. But from there, we go back to the past few weeks in her life, and find out the effect she's had on all the people she's recently met on the road. There's the former drifter and his wife and children, who now run a sheep farm, who want to give Mona a parcel of land to farm for herself and are bitterly disappointed when she doesn't want to take up a solitary existence. There's the tree researcher, who treats Mona alternately as a freak, a pet project, and someone to whom she looks up as an example of freedom. There's the researcher's protegee, and his elderly aunt and her maid, and the Tunisian migrant worker who teaches Mona how to clip grape vines and provides the central heart of the film. Mona is up front about what she wants from people: money, food, a ride, a place to stay. But all these people take something from her, and they are much more conflicted and conventional about it. It takes almost everyone she meets a long while, if ever, to realize that Mona is someone who has something to offer, although she might not be conventionally a teacher. This is a wonderful portrait of a young woman with so much to offer, who lives how she wants (or does she?) and dies young. The Criterion transfer is beautiful, as is to be expected, and Varda's script and direction are wonderful. 8/10

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Le Bonheur (Agnes Varda, 1965)

The first thing I felt after watching Le Bonheur (Happiness) was an overwhelming sense of awe. How could this movie have been all but forgotten today? It's as good as the best Godard (A Woman is a Woman, in my estimation), a beautiful, emotionally resonant piece of French New Wave filmmaking. Then, I, of course, got angry. Agnes Varda, who, in the special features of the Criterion DVD looks like the nicest French grandma you could ever hope to meet, has been neglected by film history, and why? Because she's a woman? Because she was married to Jacques Demy? Well, nevermind why, because hopefully this Criterion box set's release will change that. Francois is happily married to Therese, with two young children. All is fine (and dull) until he meets Emilie, a post office worker who connects his phone calls and takes him to get coffee. He falls in love with Emilie, but not to the detriment (in his mind) of his marriage to Therese. In fact, rather than falling out of love with either woman, or becoming secretive or surly, he is, as he says, more himself every day, becoming a better husband and lover at the same time. What a revolutionary vision of marriage, of non-monogamy! And then something changes, but not in the melodramatic way you'd expect. The film is revolutionary in its portrait of marriage between two real equals. But Francois is an interesting character, and not nearly as progressive as he seems at first. On one hand, he believes in free love -- he's not guilty about having an affair, and even tells his wife about it in a completely different way than I've ever seen in a movie. It's really the most interesting portrait of "infidelity" I've ever seen. But on the other hand, Francois is a very typical chauvinist; when Therese tells him about a movie she wants to see, and asks if he prefers Brigitte Bardot or Jeanne Moreau, he says, "I prefer you." He wants it all! He deserves it all! He can have Bardot and Moreau, and Therese and Emilie! The movie is visually stunning, with a host of motifs that really stand out: Brigitte Bardot (as a stand-in for female sexuality?), bright colors (blue & orange the most pronounced, especially in the opening sequence), flowers, and female hands (there are two stunning, parallel sequences of Therese's and Emilie's hands that are incredibly poignant in the context of the film). Varda, not only having written a beautiful, subtle script, directs it to absolute perfection. It was written & directed by a woman, but isn't necessarily feminine. It's just life. 9/10 Sorry for the absence; for some reason, Blogger had flagged this as a spam blog. Hrm.

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