Garage Demi

Absolutely nobody.

After all,they were married for 33 years ,their career began at roughly the same time,with the rise of the Nouvelle Vague ;Among the -sometimes outrageously overrated - directors of that school,Varda and Demy were among the less pretentious and their best works (mainly Demy) have stood the test of time quite well.

One cannot like Demy and not watch this documentary:it was made with love,taste and skill.Combining Demy's childhood,his hometown memories - his wildest dreams were to make shows-with the stories he transferred to the screen,Varda explores the genesis of them all,and her work is absorbing.Nantes ,"Lola" 's town ,should be remembered as Jacques Demy's hometown .Hence the title of the documentary.

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.

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.

This film, Agnes Varda's loving tribute to both Jacques Demy and to the playful joy of cinema, is a great idea executed with a beguiling sincerity and containing some wonderful moments that make up for it's flaws and that make the film very worth seeing.

Concentrating on Demy's childhood in working class France of the 1940's, the film often doesn't quite go far enough into absorbing us into it's world. It can be sketchy at times. Just about all of the characters other than the young Demy are blurry and weak. The details of the time and place are often sparse in a way that distances. When World War II begins, we would hardly know it if not for a few minor mentions of it as well as a brief, unconvincing moment involving a German soldier wandering his way into the scene of a family gathering. We don't quite get a vivid enough impression of where Demy comes from.

However, all of this doesn't matter during the wonderfully funny, charming scenes of the young Jacques making his first films. The scenes of his working on a stop-motion animated film set in a cardboard city he builds in his basement are particularly witty and fun to watch.

The film also contains some most valuable footage of Demy himself reflecting on the past and, to sometimes charming effect, the film intersperses several clips from his films (The Pied Piper, Lola, Umbrellas of Cherbourg) throughout, highlighting the influence of childhood memories on his later work.

Jacquot is recommended. It makes you want to see again (or see for the first time) the films of Jacques Demy and most anyone who has had their life taken over by cinema will be able to pick out the most innocent, inspiring parts of themselves out of the film's better moments.

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.