6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A portrait of actress, singer, and model Jane Birkin.
Starring: Alain Souchon, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Laura Betti, Jane Birkin, Charlotte GainsbourgForeign | 100% |
Drama | 60% |
Documentary | 25% |
Fantasy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1
French: LPCM Mono
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Note: This version of this film is available as part of
The Complete Films of Agnès Varda. See below for a link to a previous Blu-ray release put out by Cinelicious Pics.
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.
Jane B. par Agnès V. 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 which was restored by Ciné Tamaris in 2014 at Laboratory Eclair, with a 2K digital restoration from a 2K scan of the original negative. Color grading was supervised by Agnès Varda. This is yet another Varda film where almost 40 seconds of ambient sounds occur before even the prefatory text and mastheads appear. This is another fairly grainy looking effort, though there aren't any real resolution problems. Svet mentioned he felt things were pushed toward the warm side of things, but I have to say I had pretty much the opposite reaction, with this grading looking, like so many others in this set, kind of blue and cool, though I will say it's not as pronounced in this transfer as in some others in this set. This may be helped by the fact that Varda seems to be exploiting more subtle pastel tones a lot of the time here, as in some park scenes where Birkin becomes an almost pre-Raphaelite beauty. While some of the reds skew a bit orange again, as in some of the other films in this set, they can also pop rather well, as in the weird flamenco sequence late in the film. The black and white material has minor brightness fluctuations that pass through the frame. There are definite upticks in the already heavy grain field at certain moments, as in the sequence where Birkin returns to her flat at circa 23:42. Detail levels nonetheless remain pretty consistent throughout the presentation, and fine detail on things like the herringbone jacket Birkin wears resolve without any issues. While I'm basing things solely on a screenshot comparison, which has some inherent risks, this looks pretty darned similar if not outright identical to the Cinelicious Pics release.
Jane B. par Agnès V. features an LPCM Mono track in the original French that some prefatory text states was sourced off the "original 35mm sound negative" (does sound have a negative?). This film features a basically fairly simple sound design, but the ubiquity of vignettes with Birkin taking on different roles does offer some opportunities for both ambient environmental effects and occasional intrusions of a kind of quiet, chamber music score. Dialogue and voiceover are all clear in this narrow but problem free track.
Having grown up with something of an arguably unhealthy obsession with the infamous song Je t'aime moi non plus famously performed by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg (fans will know there's a previous version with Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot which was withdrawn at Bardot's request, or at least the request of her husband), I may have been more of a prime audience for this piece than the general public at large. But this is in a way another of Varda's "feminist" anthems itself, in that she was inspired at least in part to make this film by Birkin being upset about her imminent 40th birthday and what that might mean for her as an actress. Video has a few variabilities, but audio is fine and the 2020 interview with Birkin is great. Recommended.
(Still not reliable for this title)
The Creatures
1966
1981
L'univers de Jacques Demy
1995
Le petit amour
1988
Les glaneurs et la glaneuse... deux ans après
2002
Agnès Varda: From Here to There
2011
1976
Ydessa, the Bears and etc.
2004
1964
Réponse de femmes: Notre corps, notre sexe / Women Reply: Our Bodies, Our Sex
1975
1958
1982
The So-Called Caryatids
1984
1966
Les demoiselles ont eu 25 ans
1993
The Pleasure of Love in Iran
1976
Diary of a Pregnant Woman
1958
Varda par Agnès
2019
Mural Murals
1981
Along the Coast
1958