Documenteur

My review was written in October 1981 after a screening at the New York Film Festival: Reversing the normal procedure, Agnes Varda has made a fictional feature: "Documenteur, an Emotion Picture" to accompany her docu study of Los Angeles wall murals titled "Mur Murs". Standing alone as a picture in its own right, "Documenteur" is an unusually sombre, muted piece with enough audience-alienating effects to limit its commercial potential to Varda devotees. Programming in tandem with "Mur Murs" seems advisable.

Spare narrative involves a French woman (Sabine Mamour) living in L. A. with her son (Mathieu Demy -Varda's own child), suffering from loneliness since her man has split. With much voice-over narration of a poetic, word association type, her moods are expressed, accompanied by well-chosen minimalist shots of the city and beach plus montages of blank, lonely faces. Though her life is viewed as a series of pointless repetitions, glum film offers some hope in her loving relationship with her young son.

Varda has a great eye for composition, with remarkably bleak but arresting shots of the beach where the woman works as a typist for an absent filmmaker. Shots of wall murals are kept at a minimum, with lead moving amongst blank walls in her daily life.

Desaturated Fujicolor visuals (with a distinct bluish cast) set the film's tone, but pic is hampered by extremely poor post-synched sound, rarely even matched to the thesps' articulation (though several scenes are presented with direct sound). Acting under the circumstances ranges from flat to awkward.

This has to be one of the most underrated film in the history of cinema and for sure among the best films to come out of the 80s.

Documenteur starts where Agnès Varda's Mur Murs ends, but they have very little in common and do not need to be seen together.

Mur Murs is all about the external life of people. What we put on the outside of your walls. Documenteur is about our internal life, what we hide.

The title may suggest that it is a documentary but it is not. It is filmed in a documentary style, very much like Abbas Kiarostami did in his Koker trilogy. It is also inspired by her own life and Agnès Varda even uses her own son and her own editor (Sabine Mamou) to play the roles of Varda's assistance (but in reality both are a stand in for Agnès Varda and her own son). In one scene Sabine Mamou reads the narration for Mur Murs and when it is played back, we hear the voice of Varda. Sabine Mamou asks if this is really her voice and is told that we usually don't recognize our own voice. Agnès Varda was making a film about her own life but did not realize before much later that she had made a self biographic film. She did not recognize her own voice. Art imitates life.

This is a hauntingly beautiful film. Poetic, ambivalent, melancholic and meditative. It takes place in LA and a lot of the shots are at the shore. The west was a symbol of hope. But what happens when you can't go any farther west? When you are at the shore and you have lost hope, you are full of desires you can't fulfill, your life is fleeting way and you feel like you are drifting farther and farther from where you want to be.

There is almost no story here. The film focuses on emotions, a state of mind. If you like atmospheric and poetic films then this masterpiece is your cup of tea. Watch it and spread the good news. This film needs to be seen!

"Me, that's all I see - faces. They seem real, more real than what's conveyed by words."

"The ocean washes from the sand the footprints of parted lovers."

"This pain can't last. I'll wake up soon and then, like before, I'll do all those things, and it will simply be my life. Simply my life."

"Now I don't need to live with him anymore. He knows, wherever he is, that I'm crazy about him. I love him. Wherever he is, I'm crazy about him."

"Desire, you brought me to the shores of rapture. I drift away. I want the shore."

"I like it when we're sad, and then we say we'll go outside and dance. Don't you?"

...

There is such a loving look at humanity in all of the simple downtrodden faces we see here, as well as in the relationship between this newly divorced mom and her son, that it melted my heart. Despite the film's simplicity, or perhaps because of it, Agnès Varda had me in the palm of her hand from beginning to end. Her gentle wordplay in the narration managed to touch on the simple aspects of the human condition that we don't often think about, and her imagery of common life and the ocean's waves continuing to roll in unperturbed by it all felt profound. The intense ache of separation from a loved one is rendered hauntingly, and yet with incredible restraint. Meanwhile, Sabine Mamou is fantastic as the mother, and if you have any doubt about that, just watch the emotions on her face when she tells a friend of her breakup over the phone. I loved the little bits from 'Mur Mur' and the female perspective of the memories of sex as well. Just a wonderful, touching little film, and a snapshot of an emotional time for both Varda and her character.

'Documenteur' is an interesting essay, but not one of the milestones in the filmography of Agnes Varda. The film follows a French woman, just out of a relationship, looking for housing and than living for a while in a non-proviledged neighborhood of Los Angeles. It's an interesting combination - fiction inspired from the biography of the director who at that point in her life was separated, the lead role is played by Sabine Mamou, her only film as an actress, while the kid is Mathieu Demy, Agnes Varda's son (and formidable acting as a kid - he will become later a professional actor). Much of the rest is film in the streets with non-professional actors, with some nude and sex scenes interleaved to make us feel the loneliness of the character. A verbose text translates to us in parallel her feelings. The combination is interesting, but there is no real story here, and the film is too short, and its ending to abrupt to make complete sense. My overall feeling was to have watched a filmed essay, an experimental movie, but not really a full feature film.

I see where the reviews below are almost equally divided between Varda lovers and haters. So let me perversely fall somewhere in the middle with perhaps a slight predilection toward the adoration side of the spectrum.

God knows the haters' case is easy to make. Exhibit A is the bad acting from the subsidiary members of the cast. I mean the gal who plays the waitress friend of the mom and the guy who plays her ex are so stiff and without nuance in their line deliveries it is almost as if Varda directed them to be crappy. And exhibit B is that pseudo profound narration by the mom which Varda wisely soft peddles about halfway through, as if she realizes it's boring as hell to listen to.

But, hey, I lived in pre gentrified Venice at about the time this thing was made and it really took me back, so I'm pre disposed to like it. And as lousy as the co stars were the two leads, played by Varda's kid Matthieu Demy and especially Sabine Mamou, were excellent. And finally, and most importantly, I was taken by the film's understated, but stronger for that, message of indomitability in the face of adversity. Quite a stark contrast with the working single mom protagionist of "Jeanne Dielman", directed by the current darling of the avant garde, Chantal Akerman, whose instinct, first last and always, is to give up.

Give it a B minus.