Les dites cariatides Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Les dites cariatides 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.

What, you may well ask, is a "caryatid" (to use the singular English language version)? It is a statue of a draped female figure, a statue which is often used as a quasi-pillar to support part of a structure, and there are evidently a lot of them in and around Paris, as this kind of weirdly fascinating 1984 documentary made for French television by Varda gets into. This is another rather whimsical piece by Varda with a completely unusual focus, which Varda makes even more distinctive by mixing in poetry from Beaudelaire and music by various classical composers. This is another piece that has some fascinating historical tidbits delivered courtesy of Varda's narration, but which perhaps also offers a subtext indicating that women are real "survivors", at least in terms of Parisian statuary.

Les dites cariatides Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Les dites cariatides is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. Some prefatory text discloses this was sourced off of the original 16mm negative. There's a slightly greenish tint to a lot of the outdoor material, and a little surprisingly there's just the hint of instability during some lateral pans, as in an early moment where Varda's camera glides past a window and the squares formed by the individual panes are a bit on the "jittery" side. There's some minor flicker that can be spotted, but overall detail levels are generally good, with an understanding that this "travelogue" has a lot of midrange shots and fine detail can be limited to things like the textures of various statues. Grain is rather heavy, as befits the source format, but resolves naturally.

Les dites cariatides Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with many of the shorts included in this collection, Les dites cariatides features only a lossy Dolby Digital Mono track. The documentary's sound design is far from ambitious, though, so the lossy format doesn't detract too horribly from either Varda's narration or the classically oriented score.

Les dites cariatides Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction from 2007 (1080i; 00:51) offers Varda's comments. In French with English subtitles.


• Les Dites Cariatides Bis (1080i; 2:16) is a brief follow up to the original film. In French with English subtitles.

Les dites cariatides Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Les dites cariatides is an interesting introduction into some Parisian "color", and it has a fair amount of history divulged in its relatively brief running time. Video is generally solid, but this is another short with only lossy audio.