Documenteur

Out of the few films that I've seen from the iconic French New Wave director Agnes Varda, "Documenteur" is probably the one that I found to be her greatest accomplishment. There's something about it's strange, cold atmosphere that really stuck with me, and the film is so well made that I'm surprised how little people ever discuss it. If it were a bit more popular, I bet "Documenteur" would be analyzed countless times and get as much praise as more well known Varda films (like "Cleo from 5 to 7")

The film mixes a realistic documentary-like style with a strange, borderline surreal atmosphere, creating a bizarre and experimental treat that made me feel oddly moved and, in one way or the other, kind of uncomfortable. It basically tells the story of a woman and her son living in Los Angeles, and that's really it. But it is made in such a way that it feels like its actually something much more than that. It is a film that is about emotions as much as it is about a mother son relationship.

It's also very well made, from the lovely camera movements, various experimental editing techniques, and brilliant use of voice-over, it truly is a mystical experience.

Varda continues to travel with just a camera, content to film with no larger narrative in mind other than to approach things, here motherhood, breakup, loneliness. She's in LA here, I was initially keen for just that aspect; how would she see that place of dreams?

In a previous entry, Daguerrotypes, it was the senile old wife of a Parisian perfume maker that captured her the most, looking achingly lost in the small shop as she sat by the door, not fully there anymore, like time was blowing through her from an open window somewhere. What life here?

It's the same lostness she returns to. A mother alone with her son in LA, after breaking up with the father, wanders and ruminates. What it says about Varda's marriage to Demy is a guess, but it matters I think that she presents on screen a grieving woman alone with her son.

It's Varda's own son actually, the French woman a surrogate for Varda, a way for her to have a body in the stream of images.

We can glean more about the 'real' Varda in other ways, I'm more interested in perceptions and how they give rise to self. It's telling for me here that she gives to herself the role of a typist, typing and retyping pages before a beach, a favorite place for her. Varda could have plainly chosen to portray her as anything, she chose a job where words, expression, have been reduced to a mechanical task without meaning.

In the beginning she ruminates on the meaninglessness of words, how words and images lose meaning, faces look strange, when you're shut out from the life that gives everything its place. Meaning is use linguists would say. It's itself the attitude to find meaning I would add, how you place yourself in things.

It gives an overwhelming sense of melancholy in the end, which is how Varda places herself here, fecund absence, waiting without reproach. Her friend Chris Marker, it reminds of him in spirit, but he also finds bemusement in many small things. She's shut in her own self here, it was probably a time for it. It strikes a simple note. Oh but she's so adept with echo, I've carried it with me for two days now.

This is Varda staring out from that window that time blows through. I'm setting my eyes ahead to a time when she has left this room.

"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 a wonderful little French movie shot in Southern California. It tells a small, personal story about a young single mother trying to raise her son and make ends meet in a new, unfamiliar country.

It's very different than most things I've seen in movies but very much like real life. It is very good. It feels like a documentary and was probably shot like one. It was probably shot without a script, focusing on small details and things like that. It has that feel to it. For those reasons I know a lot of people will not like this movie. But for those very same reasons it will appeal to others. Recommend.

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.