Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

L' opéra-mouffe 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.

There's a famous United States motto that goes "Virginia is for lovers," but those with more international tastes will almost certainly subscribe to the arguably just as well known maxim that "Paris is for lovers." In that regard, L'opéra-mouffe, which is also known as Diary of a Pregnant Woman, may serve as ample evidence of what happens when lovers, well, love. This is another of Varda's efforts which is "geographically" centered, in this case Rue Mouffetard in Paris' Latin Quarter, where Varda kind of toes a fine line between documentarian and (fictional) narrative filmmaker, with looks at both young love and somewhat older dissolution within this neighborhood.

L' opéra-mouffe Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

L'opéra-mouffe 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 a 2K digital restoration based on the original negative, with grading supervised by Varda. A lot of this presentation looks great, with excellent black levels and nicely modulated gray scale, and with generally commendable detail levels on things like some of the thickly textured clothing some of the people are wearing. There are some rough looking moments, including some later bedroom scenes that have pretty noisy looking grain, There are also some pretty bad scratches and even a warped frame or two during a scene set in a bar.

L' opéra-mouffe Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with many of the shorts in this set L'opéra-mouffe features only a lossy Dolby Digital Mono track. This film is really almost a "silent", in that large swaths pass by with either only ambient environmental sounds or score, or a combination of both. The score sounds decent within a lossy context, and has good dynamic range, with some playful wind figures and fun accordion.

L' opéra-mouffe Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction from 2007 (1080i; 1:58) offers Varda's comments. In French with English subtitles.

L' opéra-mouffe Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

L'opéra-mouffe is a relatively early piece from Varda, but you can already sense her reaching out beyond the typical bounds of traditional "documentaries" with this piece. Video is generally solid, though it does have a few rough spots, but this is another short in this set with only lossy audio.