6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Agnès Varda captures day-to-day life along the Rue Mouffetard.
Director: Agnès VardaForeign | 100% |
Drama | 60% |
Romance | 18% |
Short | 18% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
French: Dolby Digital Mono
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
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.
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.
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 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.
(Still not reliable for this title)
The Pleasure of Love in Iran
1976
2003
1981
Le petit amour
1988
Les fiancés du pont Mac Donald ou (Méfiez-vous des lunettes noires) / The Fiancés of the Bridge Mac Donald
1961
2015
You've Got Beautiful Stairs, You Know
1986
1984
The Creatures
1966
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
1965
1969
Along the Coast
1958
1955