La Pointe Courte

La Pointe Courte (1956) is Agnès Varda's feature debut, and you can watch it online on iFILM. After twelve years away in Paris, a man named Louis returns to the tiny Mediterranean fishing village where he grew up, near the town of Sète. His wife has just told him she wants to leave.

Varda braids two threads that barely touch. In one, the couple — played by Philippe Noiret and Silvia Monfort — wanders the lagoons and wooden shacks, testing whether anything still holds them together. In the other, the village itself goes about its day: fishermen working the water, inspectors condemning a tainted catch, a jousting tournament on the canal, births and burials. The married pair speak in careful, literary lines; the locals simply live. That gap is the whole point.

Shot on almost no budget with non-professional villagers, the film was edited by a young Alain Resnais and is often called a forerunner of the French New Wave, three years ahead of Breathless. It is cool, deliberate, and demanding, rewarding patience with the precision of every frame. Stream La Pointe Courte online on iFILM.