Synopsis
The Beaches of Agnès (Les Plages d'Agnès, 2008) is an autobiographical documentary you can watch online on iFILM. At eighty, Agnès Varda — often called the godmother of the French New Wave — points the camera at her own life, stitching the film together from memories, clips of her old work and playful staged tableaux.
Varda revisits the shorelines that marked her: the Belgian coast of her childhood, the beaches of Sète, the sand where she once shot her movies. Between them she gathers faces. Her husband, director Jacques Demy, whom she remembers with aching tenderness. Her children, her friends, the fellow travelers of half a century in cinema. At one point she plants mirrors in the sand and walks backward through them — exactly the way memory works.
The result isn't a tidy career summary but a witty, wandering, sometimes deeply sad game played with her own biography. It won the César for Best Documentary. A perfect doorway for newcomers to Varda, and a gift for anyone who already loves her. Stream The Beaches of Agnès (2008) online on iFILM.
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