Les plages d’Agnès

“If they open me up, they’ll find beaches,” asserts octogenarian filmmaker Agnès Varda, one of cinema’s great masters. Her work spans fiction and documentary, often blending the two together and defying genre.

Les plages d’Agnès is an autobiographical film, an accumulation of memories rich with imaginative texture. Varda takes us on a surrealist journey through her life, on a magic carpet ride of images, photographs, film clips, stories, installations and scenes. Beginning with images of family, we cross the Left Bank of the Nouvelle Vague – the group of young, innovative filmmakers that included Chris Marker, Varda’s life partner Jacques Demy, and of course Varda herself.

From her hometown of Sète to the rue Daguerre in Paris where she now lives, the film circumnavigates a resplendent life. This is a brilliant construction, a montage mosaic full of self-reflection, random thoughts, memories and observations in which form and content are no longer distinguishable from each other. Varda stimulates, moves and inspires with her humor, her imagination and her completely original cinematic voice.