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The Beaches of Agnès (2008)

Original title: Les Plages d'Agnès

dir: Agnès Varda

When you look inside any person, you see landscapes, when you look inside me, you see beaches - says the octogenarian, but still very lively veteran of New Wave. In her film autobiography, Agnès Varda takes her audience on a journey through different internal landscapes. We can see beaches which symbolise her childhood in Belgium, her marriage to Jacques Demy (director of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), years of her feminist struggles, journeys, emotions related to making her films. In The Beaches Varda's talent flourishes. She has always had an extraordinary skill for smoothly surpassing genres and styles, presenting feelings without sentimentalism, creating false realities without a pretentiously theatrical style. In her film diary, the director enchants her past, showing family photos, fragments of films, staging crucial events of her life, all with an ironic commentary. She looks back at her life, as if saying je ne regrette rien, because the most important thing is I'm alive and I remember. (Ewa Szabłowska, ENH)

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velocipedist velocipedist rated The Beaches of Agnès

8 stars

Esme Esme added a trailer of The Beaches of Agnès

Trailer: The Beaches of Agnès

Stain Stain wrote about The Beaches of Agnès

A lady who was the only female director of the French New Wave, married to another member of it, marched in '60s antiwar demonstrations, and who hung out with Jim Morrison must have had a much more interesting life than this film is. This may be the only documentary that's left the most interesting stuff out of the film. We hear about how her husband, Jacques Demy, died of AIDS in 1990. How did Mme. Varda *not* get it? If she *was* infected, why is she 81, still alive, and kicking today?

6 stars

guybellinger guybellinger wrote a review of The Beaches of Agnès

Autobiographies can be the worst or the best of things. Either a boring exercise in conceit and self-absorption or a fascinating self-exploration by a person of value. Well, the Agnes of 'Les plages Read the article

michuk michuk wrote about The Beaches of Agnès

Agnès Varda steps back both literaly (she's walking backwards throughout the film) and in a metaphorical sense, in order to tell us the story of "those things that happened to her and that can be interesting to others". She talks in her own special way which is funny and interesting, but also very touching, especially when it concerns her dead friends and husband: Jacques Demy. It's a beautiful (and probably final) movie of this important director.

8 stars