'Agnes' takes autobiographical look at French filmmaker

Setting up mirrors with a film crew on a Belgian beach, Agnes Varda sets about telling the story of "a little old lady, pleasantly plump." That little old lady turns out to be Varda, who made the picture in her 80th year. It's called "The Beaches of Agnes," and it is a wonderful movie.

Not conventional autobiography, the film nonetheless outlines Varda's amazing life: growing up in a Vichy France fishing village, studying photography and film in Paris, becoming the muse of Jacques Demy while making some of the first French New Wave films herself, directing the first screen appearances of Gerard Depardieu and Harrison Ford, befriending artists such as Alexander Calder and more.

But Varda doesn't present herself as amazing or in any way out of the ordinary. Instead, she picks through flea markets, finding old cinema cards of herself and Demy. She returns to the places where she lived, sometimes with great affection, sometime blah. She brings in her children and some friends. She's a little old lady picking through her life, scavenging in a similar manner to those in her latest documentary, "The Gleaners and I."

Some footage from that film turns up in "The Beaches of Agnes," as do shots from movies throughout her career, including "Vagabond," her most popular movie. Here, that leads to a discussion of her feminism.

Shooting some of the movie herself with a hand-held digital camera, Varda shows that her photographer's eye remains fully focused and her sense of the magic of movies has never been better seen.

Full of emotion, which she says can't be controlled, and flashes of humor, "The Beaches of Agnes" is the story of an artist doing what she loves, whether it is living outside in a Parisian courtyard, visiting museums with Demy or making a biographical film of his childhood while he was dying from AIDS.

The audience for "The Beaches of Agnes" is, without question, far more limited than that of, say, "Disney's A Christmas Carol," which also opens today. But Varda's film, like the rest of her oeuvre, isn't a commercial endeavor. It is a loving look at a "little old lady, pleasantly plump" picking through her life, who just happens to be Varda herself.

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.