Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.5

La Pointe Courte 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.

Almost two decades before the venerable Ingmar Bergman deconstructed life as a couple in his memorable Scenes from a Marriage, Agnès Varda made her feature film debut in 1955 with La Pointe Courte, which examines at least some of the same issues that Bergman did in his film. Interestingly, though, while Varda focuses on the marriage between characters rather notably known only as "him" (Philippe Noiret) and "her" (Silvia Monfort), she also expands her story beyond this pair to include a small seaside village where the two have come to hopefully repair their relationship.

Throughout her film career, Varda often emphasized the lives of "villagers", whether those be residents in actual villages, or even the denizens of her own "village like" street in Paris where she lived, which she profiled in Daguerréotypes. As such, La Pointe Courte is a bit more of a "community" affair, but it provides the same kind of often piquant commentary on human behavior, in this case in terms of both the "formal" interrelationship of a marriage as well as the more "casual" connections within a community, that often informs Varda's work.

Rather fascinatingly, La Pointe Courte is often cited as a forerunner (and in some critical circles, the first real example) of what would become known as the nouvelle vague, though in a way it might be more helpful to think of this film as a kind of cinematic bridge between the then still rather vibrant neorealist movement in Italian circles and what would be the epochal changes wrought by French directors like Jean-Luc Godard in just a few years. The structure in the film is probably not as overtly provocative as, say, in Breathless, but Varda does wend her way through a variety of characters in an almost Slacker like way at times.

Despite this audacious debut, Varda didn't find immediate success as a film director, which may have alerted her (if she wasn't already aware, which my hunch is she was) to a perhaps inherent sexism in the film world in general and in France in particular. Looking back on La Pointe Courte now from the vantage point of over a half a century, it remains an astounding piece of work, one which is both personal and universal.

La Pointe Courte Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

La Pointe Courte is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. Some prefatory text cards disclose this was sourced off the negative, originally scanned at 4K and then finished at 2K, done in Bologna in 2013. This is by and large a really ravishing accounting of this often quite striking looking film. Black levels are solid throughout, and the gray scale very nicely modulated. Detail levels are typically very good to excellent. There is still some noticeable damage that has made it through the restoration gauntlet. For example, in the opening moments there's what appears to be slight emulsion degradation on the right side of the frame, and a bit later, when the focal couple first arrives in the village and are walking by a chain link fence, there's considerable mottling and speckling that shows up for just a moment. On the whole, though, there are no major distractions. Grain can occasionally be a little gritty looking, but resolves naturally for the most part.

La Pointe Courte Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

La Pointe Courte features an LPCM Mono track in the original French. The film has a somewhat astringent, modern score by Pierre Barbaud which frequently features winds, and that element, while kind of interstitial, sounds fine. Dialogue, including quite a bit of "background" chatter that the optional English subtitles never translate, also sounds fine, though there are some very minor pops that can be heard in passing.

La Pointe Courte Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Mathieu Amalric and Agnes Varda (1080i; 8:59) is a 2012 interview.


• Agnes Varda (1080i; 15:43) is a 2007 interview.


• Cineastes de Notre Temps (1080i; 8:50) is an excerpt from a 1964 broadcast.


• Jhumpa Lahiri (1080p; 3:54) offers Lahiri's thoughts about the film.

La Pointe Courte Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's kind of interesting how Varda starts this film by wending through various villagers' lives before the ostensible focal couple is even introduced, just one of the many structural ingenuities on display here. Varda's camera is also amazingly mobile, especially considering some of the locations she's covering. The film itself is fascinating both for its inherent content, but perhaps just as much for some of its "meta" aspects which have rippled out from it in the many years since its original release. Technical merits are solid, and the supplementary package enjoyable. Highly recommended.