The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later 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.

Perhaps unexpectedly given its rather strange subject matter, The Gleaners and I became a rather sizable hit for Agnès Varda, to the point that she decided to do this "follow up" a couple of years later. In this often sweet piece, Varda revisits some of the people she profiled in the first documentary, getting a bit more into their personal stories, while also exploring some new folks as well as the general response to the first film. While The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later certainly is able to be understood and enjoyed as its own standalone piece, it's probably best appreciated after having seen the first documentary. For fans of Varda's homages to her husband Jacques Demy, as in some of the films linked to above in the opening paragraph of this review, there's some unexpected but totally charming "gleaning" that Varda herself does in terms of Demy's early work.

The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.32. This is another short, like The Gleaners and I, which kind of curiously and perhaps tellingly features no prefatory text about the transfer, and in this case (unlike with The Gleaners and I), the IMDb doesn't provide any help. That said, I'm assuming Varda and her team used minicams again, as this has more of a digital capture appearance than that of film, but that said, the resolution in this follow up is considerably better than in the first film. There are sharper detail levels throughout, and less of the processed, slightly digital look that beset the first film. The palette is generally very well suffused throughout.

The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later features an LPCM Mono track in the original French. As with the first film, this is once again comprised largely of narration and first person talking head material, with occasional ambient environmental sounds dotting the background especially in outdoor material. Everything is presented cleanly and clearly without any major problems.

The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Pre-Filmum to The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (1080p; 3:02) is a brief introduction. In French with English subtitles.


• Tribute to Zgougou (1080i; 2:09) is an homage to Varda's beloved cat. In French with English subtitles.

The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As a standalone documentary The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later probably won't resonate for many, despite any of its abundant charms. Seen in tandem with The Gleaners and I, though, it's another riff on Varda's "reunion" films, with a few newcomers thrown into the mix. Video is better than in the first film but probably not at the general level seen in many of the other films in this set, but audio is fine.