7 p., cuis., s. de b., ... (à saisir) Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

7 p., cuis., s. de b., ... (à saisir) Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 31, 2020

Note: This film is available as part of The Complete Films of Agnès Varda.

In the wake (figurative or otherwise) of Agnès Varda’s death last year at the age of 90, quite a bit has rightfully been written about this iconic force in both French and global cinema. Varda’s output includes well over fifty credits as a director (including some television entries as detailed by the IMDb), and aside from listing some of her better known triumphs, many obituaries and/or eulogies about Varda mentioned any number of other biographical data points, including her rather unique position as a woman in France’s nouvelle vague movement, her own feminism which was featured none too subtly in some of her films, and her frequently provocative experimental style. But you know what one of the things that kind of fascinates me personally most about Varda? That she was married for 28 years to Jacques Demy, from 1962 until Demy’s death in 1990. That Varda, often a purveyor of verité infused “realism”, whether that be in outright documentaries or at least ostensibly more “fictional” outings, and Demy, a director whose candy colored, dreamlike and at least relatively "Hollywoodized" musicals with Michel Legrand brought a new luster and gloss to French cinema, managed to make a marital go of it for so long is certainly testament to the maxim that “opposites attract”, even if those oppositional forces in this instance played out at least in part in terms of what kinds of films the two were often best remembered for. If Varda's long marriage to Demy is more than enough reason to celebrate her personal life, her professional life is beautifully feted in this rather astounding new set from Criterion, which aggregates an amazing 39 films (albeit some running as short as a few minutes) to provide what is arguably one of the most insightful overviews of Varda's cinematic oeuvre. Perhaps unavoidably, but also undeniably movingly, these personal and professional sides of Varda merge in at least some of the films in this set, including The Young Girls Turn 25, The World of Jacques Demy, Jacquot de Nantes, and The Beaches of Agnès.

Just as the Covid pandemic outbreak was beginning, a realtor friend of mine here in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, alerted me to the fact that he was going to be the featured realtor on an episode of HGTV's House Hunters. I jokingly emailed to him that I was going to set up a drinking game for every time someone said "bright and airy" or "I can see myself [insert activity here]", and my friend hilariously emailed back that considering what was going on it would be "I can see myself quarantined in this room." There's something at least a little similar going on in 7 p., cuis., s. de b., ... (à saisir). which is without a doubt one of the more strange Varda shorts. As such, reactions to it will probably depend on how attuned various viewers are to Varda's sometimes rather skewed perspective. This short deals with the sale of a flat, but it's not a narrative in the traditional sense. Instead, as Varda discusses in her introduction, it's more like what a realtor might say in a showing or what a prospective buyer might imagine taking place after a purchase, in what might be thought of as the French analog to that "I can see myself [insert activity here]" mentioned above.

This is in some ways deliberately surreal, with completely bizarre imagery that almost reminded me of Luis Buñuel at times. Some completely odd vignettes are depicted that feature what I assume are the "imaginings" of prospective buyers, and those at least may provide at least the hint of a traditional narrative. But Varda plays with the imagery here, having flat doors swing open to divulge different tableaux, only to have them swing shut and then open again to something different. It's all very odd and dreamlike, and some might argue nightmarish, especially in certain pecularities like Varda using mannequin heads in the place of supposedly "human" characters.

7 p., cuis., s. de b., ... (à saisir) Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

7 p., cuis., s. de b., ... (à saisir) is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. Some prefatory text discloses that this was shot on 35mm argentic color stock in a 1.66 panoramic format, and was restored by Ciné Tamaris in 2015 at Laboratory Eclair, with a 2K digital restoration from a 2K scan of the original negative. Color grading was supervised by Agnès Varda. This has rather pronounced grain throughout the presentation which nonetheless resolves naturally. The palette can be alternately kind of bland, as in some shots of empty rooms with white walls, or actually almost psychedelic at times, as in one really odd scene that shows a woman making what looks like a huge vat of blue jello. Some shots, notably some with backlighting, seem to have been designed to be intentionally hazy looking. The entire transfer looks just a bit dark, perhaps because it all takes place inside.

7 p., cuis., s. de b., ... (à saisir) Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Unfortunately many of the shorts included in this collection offer only lossy audio, and 7 p., cuis., s. de b., ... (à saisir) features a Dolby Digital Mono track in the original French. The short's sound design is not overly ambitious, though, with both narration by the realtor and kinda sorta dialogue in some of the vignettes making up the bulk of the presentation, with occasional comments from the typically astringent, atonal score that Varda seemed to prefer for many of her outings. Optional English subtitles are available.

7 p., cuis., s. de b., ... (à saisir) Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction from 2007 (1080i; 2:10) offers Varda's thoughts. In French with English subtitles.

7 p., cuis., s. de b., ... (à saisir) Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I say this with tongue only slightly in cheek, but 7 p., cuis., s. de b., ... (à saisir) kind of made me wonder what a Varda directed episode of House Hunters might have been like. This is a completely odd, but undeniably distinctive, piece. Video looks generally very good, but this is another short with only lossy audio.