At 80, Agnès Varda turns her life into art—using beaches, mirrors and memories.
Thanks to Jeremy Urquhart of Collider for pointing us toward this one in his “The 25 Best Documentaries of All Time, Ranked”.
Trailer for “The Beaches of Agnès”
You Can’t Make This Sh!t Up
- Varda opens her autobiography by hauling a collection of giant mirrors onto the beach at La Panne, Belgium, where she spent time as a child. The mirrors reflect the ocean, the crew and Varda herself. She even lays one on the sand as the waves wash over it.
- Varda made the doc as she approached 80 and thought it could be her farewell to filmmaking. Instead, she kept going. “Faces Places,” made with artist JR, earned her an Academy Award nomination almost a decade later.
- For her 80th birthday, Varda gets 80 brooms. The joke works better in French: “balais,” the word for brooms, is also slang for years of age. The collection even includes toilet brushes.
Watch “The Beaches of Agnès”
You can watch “The Beaches of Agnès” on Prime Video and Apple TV.
Ratings:
- My Rating: 91/100
- IMDB Rating: 8.0/10
- Rotten Tomatoes Ratings: 88/100 (Users); 96/100 (Critics)
Release Date: September 3, 2008 (Venice Film Festival); December 17, 2008 (France)
Director’s Note: Agnès Varda directs, writes, produces and stars in this 112-minute autobiography. “The Beaches of Agnès” also won the 2009 César Award for Best Documentary.
Other Unique Stuff
- Varda admits she wasn’t even much of a movie fan before becoming a filmmaker. She said that by age 25 she had probably seen only nine or ten movies. She started as a photographer and basically jumped into filmmaking by imagining what cinema could be.
- Varda’s longtime Paris home and production base on Rue Daguerre became such a big part of her life that she made the 1976 documentary “Daguerréotypes” about the shopkeepers living and working nearby.
- The beach she creates outside that home wasn’t movie magic. Her crew actually covered the street with sand. Criterion later released a short feature called “Daguerre Beach” about creating the sequence.
Wrap Up:
“The Beaches of Agnès” is what happens when a filmmaker turns her own memory into an art project. It’s strange, funny and deeply personal. Varda makes 80 years of life feel like she’s showing you a box of old photos at her kitchen table.
Thanks for reading!
Heather Fenty, Guest Writer, Daily Doc