Jacquot de Nantes

I know logically that the many, many cut-always to the Demy film clips break up the flow of the dramatizations of his childhood (and those extreme close-ups of the late Demy, his skin showing I believe the lesions from HIV that would take his life too soon are particularly jarring, sometimes Im not sure in a good way). But emotionally, what Varda is doing here is all of a piece, and (Nazis and Occupied France aside) it all makes me wish I could have been a boy/young man in Frnace in the late 30s and 40s.

In a way, it feels kind of like an excellent midway midway between Cinema Paradiso (which I like but I once called too "shmoopy" and I stick but it) and Au revoir les Enfants (which I love, but has a slightly harder edge and sadder overall feeling). Varda gets natural performances, and it's a striking and cool balance between warmth and a frank realism (ie boys showing a girl their little penises is treated as a cheerful activity, for both sexes).

And really, you don't get this in cinema practically ever - a husband and wife filmmaking pair, both playful and innovators. where the latter made a literal cinematic love letter to the former after he died (albeit Demy was writing his memoties when he died) - that would make it important by itself. That it is also beautiful to look at in black and white and is edited like a wonderful dream makes it even more special: it's a love letter to her husband, but also to cinema and creative perseverance itself; when he as a boy makes the little hand-cranked projector, it feels like a small miracle.

Director Agnés Varda gives a loving picture of her husband Jacques Demy's teens in rural Nantes. Little Jacques (or Jacquot) grows up obsessed with his interest in movies and the idea of making his own.

As just a little boy he makes his own animated stories. Now and then his childhood adventures turns into a movie, and instead we see small scenes from his later classic movies; Lola, The Young Girls Of Rochefort and others. For example at one scene at his fathers garage when a customers picks up his car : suddenly we see a scene with a garage from "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", with the same dialogue.

Jacques Demy and Agnes Varda made the movie together. He provided with stories from his childhood, and she wrote the manuscript. It is a very beautiful little film about childhood and about a little kid obsessed with his movies.

Agnes Varda's biographical sketch of Jacques Demy's childhood and how it shaped him into a filmmaker. I use the word "sketch" because the film doesn't really go in-depth to any degree and it feels like a pretty superficial treatment. However, there's a lot of warmth and charm to it, and the anecdotes being revealed make for compelling material. If the sort of nostalgia on display isn't terribly original, at least there is some originality in the structure, tying clips from Demy's work to specific moments to his youth. The brief scenes of the real Demy (presumably not long before his death) help keeps things fresh as well. While this didn't knock my socks off, it was a very pleasant and endearing movie.

French film "Jacquot De Nantes" is Agnès Varda's personal cinematographic tribute to her husband late director Jacques Demy who has made some of the most marvelous musical films in the history of French cinema. No true cinéphile can claim to truly know French cinema unless he/she has seen Jacques Demy's films namely "Les Parapluies De Cherbourg", "Les Demoiselles De Rochefort", "La Baie Des Anges" etc. This film explores the role of childhood in a film director's life. Agnès Varda shows how an ordinary boy without any connection to the world of cinema from a humble milieu with a mechanic father and a hairdresser mother achieves greater heights to become a reputed film director. In many ways, the incidents from Jacques Demy's childhood are similar to those of other leading directors of French cinema who also had experienced troubled childhood experiences namely François Truffaut and Maurice Pialat. Louis Malle is the only exception to this rule as he belonged to one of the most wealthiest families in France. The film is constructed in such a manner that one finds the echo of the events experienced by Jacques Demy in his own films. This effect is carried out through scenes wherein an arrow separates childhood memory scenes from actual scenes which were all an integral part of Jacques Demy's own films. The very fact that Jacques Demy makes his appearance at regular intervals in this film helps us to place scenes from his films in their proper perspective. Jacquot De Nantes is true to life as it depicts minor as well as major incidents from Jacques Demy's life without being maudlin. For cinéphiles the sheer joy of Jacques Demy going crazy about classics of French cinema namely "Les Enfants Du Paradis" is a veritable visual treat. Lastly, had it not been for Agnès Varda and her brilliant film "Jacquot De Nantes" not many cinéphiles would have been able to learn that it was French director Christian Jacque who gave young Jacques Demy a chance to enter the world of cinema when he discovered the young boy's talent during one of his visits to Nantes-a city where Jacques Demy was born.

I think that director such as Jacques Demy, deserves much better treatment than the one he got in this poor cinema biography by Agnes Varda. This is done in low tradition of French TV dramas and I couldn´t find a single inspirational and emotional moment in this trivial film. Varda directed "Jacquot de Nantes" in a manner which is closer to the documentary feature but still not quite. So, what we got here is steady camera work which doesn´t allow us to see any emotions on screen and therefor care for the characters, and on the other hand it doesn´t go any deeper from the surface in documentary tradition. The ending is completely without any sense and it just goes on with the rest of the piece. Simply boring and very forgettable. One might also expect much more from the director of such classics as "Kung-Fu Master" and "Vagabond".