Jacquot de Nantes Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

Jacquot de Nantes 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.

Jacquot de Nantes is an unabashed love letter from Agnès Varda to her husband Jacques Demy, and as such it holds a special place in her filmography. This was made as Demy was near death, and scenes with the real life Demy, which are interspersed with dramatized recreations of his childhood and youth, show a man perhaps buffeted by the vagaries of fate (and illness) and obviously frail, but still resilient and almost strangely sanguine. Jacquot de Nantes is neither a critical analysis of Demy's work nor a leering peek into what was evidently at times an occasionally troubled private life. Instead, it's a dreamlike evocation of Demy's own "memoirs", which he had begun both talking about and writing down in the face of his imminent demise.

As is frequently the case with Varda's films, Jacquote de Nantes has elements that are both more traditionally narrative in flavor, intercut with some moments that might be more at home in a typical documentary. Also making the film stylistically interesting from a visual perspective is Varda's choice to ping pong back and forth between black and white and color. It initially seems like she's bifurcating the "chromatic" choices in terms of "historical" recreations of Demy's childhood (in black and white) and some performances either he engages in or attends (in color, as if to suggest that's when life really "blossomed"), but that thesis is not supported entirely by every choice Varda makes in that regard in the film.

Jacquot de Nantes does a wonderfully heartwarming job of detailing the life and maturation of little Jacques (played by a variety of boys and teens), offering a sweet if sometimes tart evocation of what amounts to the Varda staple of "village life". Demy's upbringing would later refract into his films, and Varda makes some fun connections between various things that happened to Demy during his childhood and scenes from his later movies (actual film clips are used interstitially throughout the piece).

There probably should be a more critical analysis of the lives and work of both Demy and Varda someday, and perhaps Varda's own children (including her son with Demy) would be the likely suspects to make that a reality. But Jacquot de Nantes provides a touching look at a little boy who got captivated by movies early in his life and knew from that moment what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

Jacquot de Nantes Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Jacquot de Nantes is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.67. Some prefatory text discloses that this was shot on 35mm color stock in a 1.66 panormaic format, and restored in 2013 by DIG Image, with a digital 2K restoration made from a 4K digital scan of the original 35mm negative. Agnès Varda supervised the color grading. I'll just start this video review with one word: red. For those who may have been reading the reviews of this set "in order", you've already come across my comments that many of the films tend to be graded slightly coolly, with a somewhat blue or slate gray undertone, something that can push reds toward orange territory at times. But here in really gorgeously warm and natural looking color are some vivid, true reds in an early scene where little Jacquot is watching a Punch and Judy puppet show which features some incredibly vivid curtains. The color material in this film repeatedly pops with gorgeous authority, and fine detail, as in the texture of the canvas seen in a painting early in the film, looks precise and palpable. Unfortunately, some of the black and white material is at least a bit more variable. There's some noticeable roughness on display in the early sequence which introduces little Jacquot in the dark recesses of his father's garage (where a little maybe sexually illicit activity is going on), and then later when Jacquot and other boys are playing at his flat, you can see bands of milky white damage running through the frame. Some of the black and white material shows somewhat chunkier grain than the bulk of the presentation, but aside from these passing variances, a lot of the black and white material offers secure detail levels and solid contrast. Some opening video of Demy lying on a beach looks like it may have been blown up from Super 16. There are some unavoidable variances in clarity and grain structure due to the many film clips that are utilized.

Jacquot de Nantes Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Jacquot de Nantes features an LPCM Mono track which was restored from the original 35mm magnetic mix. There's some really nice ambient depth in this track despite its inherent narrowness, with, for example, the clang and clatter of the Demy garage really sounding authentic and believable. There are quite a few source cues in the score, including total "cutaways" to scenes from Demy's musicals, and these moments sound full bodied and forceful. Dialogue and narration are all rendered without any problems whatsoever.

Jacquot de Nantes Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Agnes Tells a Sad and Happy Story (1080i; 17:05) is a moving piece with Varda and several of her collaborators discussing the film in particular, but Jacques Demy's death in general and how it informed some of Varda's subsequent work. In French with English subtitles.


• Souvenirs and Evocations (1080i; 6:35) offers Varda and other filmmakers discussing how they first fell in love with movies. In French with English subtitles.


• Trailer (1080i; 2:10)

Jacquot de Nantes Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Jacquot de Nantes is an incredibly heartfelt love letter to Demy from Varda, but the most amazing thing about it is, despite how "personal" it is, it's instantly accessible to anyone who loves film. Technical merits are solid, and the supplementary package, while not overly bounteous, is excellent. Highly recommended.