Word: varda
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Directed by Agnes Varda...
...cool artsy line-and-shadow shot after another flashes on the screen. Wheatfields stretch into the distance, crooked fences reflect sunlit weeds, the world becomes one large poetic image as French director Agnes Varda transforms one girl's story into a supposedly universal metaphor; life is an aimless wander, meeting people and passing through places until you die. And, believe it or not, the film's beautiful cinematography and Saundrine Bonnaire's quiet naturalness as the girl actually make this work...
...Agnes Varda's remarkable film Vagabond begins with Mona's end (she is found frozen to death in a ditch) and then recounts the last months of her life through a series of recollections by the people she met on her lonesome road, all of whose insights into her character or motives are banal. The director's style is as bleakly austere as her subject's life. Varda's camera is nearly always at an objectifying distance from Mona, her editing as abrupt as the small changes in the journey's rhythm (here a spot of comfort, there a moment...
...there is something, too, in the saga of the feminist groupie, Pomme, although most of her polemical songs and free-spirited antics are pretty silly. But the value of all this lies in its novelty, not in its depth. For in all her feminist enthusiasm, French director Agnes Varda fails to delve beyond the difficult circumstances of these women's lives to probe into their hearts and psyches. The resolutions of the two journeys are too simple--the widow cautiously remarries and finds happiness, while the singer leaves her domineering husband and, lo and behold, also finds happiness. There...
...Varda's film is not as harmless as her lyrics. It is upsetting because it can and is being taken seriously. Those who have eagerly awaited a so-called "feminist film" are jumping on Varda's bandwagon, pushing her on to popular success. When Varda's silly women start being called "symbols" they aren't so funny any more...