Uncle Yanco Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Uncle Yanco 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.

Genealogists or at least those interested in their family histories have experienced a boon due to the explosion of online sites which aggregate data and, in some cases, DNA, in order to help people find relatives, either living or not. I have a somewhat ironic personal history in that regard, in that I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, as the son of an orphan whose family history was a mystery. Some readers may be aware that Salt Lake City is where many, indeed probably most, of the biggest sites' genealogical records have been stored due to the research proclivities of the Mormon church. That said, it wasn't until the advent of the internet and the ability to more easily delve into records that we were actually able to find my father's family over the past few years, including rather incredibly a first cousin we didn't know about previously. Something rather similar is on hand in the charming short Uncle Yanco, which finds Agnès Varda tagging along with Jacques Demy to California in 1967, and by way of a kind of sidebar, meeting up with her own first cousin (once removed, for those who keep track of such datapoints) whom she didn't previously know, a kind of "hippie" artist named Jean Varda, but who went by the nickname Yanco.

This is another completely whimsical piece by Varda which repeatedly breaks traditional "documentary" rules by offering little vignettes where supposedly "real" interchanges are performed again and again as separate "takes", and with some kind of cheeky visual bells and whistles added at various moments. Uncle Yanco is a character, to be sure, and it probably helps cement the notion that the Varda family was probably very colorful as a group.

Uncle Yanco Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Uncle Yanco is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. Some prefatory text discloses that this was restored in 2013 by L'Immagine Tirtovata Laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Ciné Tamaris, with a 2K restoration from the 35mm original negative. Agnès Varda supervised the color grading. This is a really lush and rather beautiful looking presentation that features a gorgeously saturated palette that is appropriately psychedelic at times, given the era in which the film was shot. Detail levels are generally excellent, and even some nighttime footage shot as a car travels across the Golden Gate Bridge offers above average shadow detail. But it's the daytime material that pops extremely well, with all of the seaside scenes looking great. There is some intentional tinting on display, including orange tones added to some stills. Grain resolves naturally throughout.

Uncle Yanco Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Uncle Yanco features an LPCM Mono track in French, and a Dolby Digital Mono track in English. Prefatory text states that the "original mono sound was restored from two 35mm magnetic tracks, French and English." As with some of the other features that offer this same "two fer" delivered with these same audio codecs, the dialogue and narration is a bit hotter in the French track, and there's better overall depth in that track as well, though this is not a sonically ambitious film, so the lossy Dolby track may suffice perfectly well for those averse to reading subtitles. Music is typically used in the background, swelling during interstitial moments where no dialogue or narration is featured, and it sounds fine throughout.

Uncle Yanco Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Intro from 2007 (1080i; 1:21) offers Varda's thoughts. In French with English subtitles.

Uncle Yanco Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Uncle Yanco is a sweet, charming and completely distinctive piece, and, if you're like I am, will leave you wanting to meet as many folks in the Varda family as possible. Technical merits are solid, and Uncle Yanco comes Recommended.