Jacquot de Nantes

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.

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.

My second Varda's entry (after CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 1962, 7/10) is her cinematic eulogy to her late husband, the filmmaker Jacques Demy (1931-1990) after 28 years of marriage, who passed away one year before the film's release, recounts Demy's life from childhood to adolescence in Nantes, re-enacts mostly sketchy episodes of that time from Demy's memoir, particularly during the Occupied France in WWII and Jacquot (Jacques' nickname) 's ever-growing passion towards cinema.

Named after his paternal grandfather, it is unexpectedly poignant when a young Jacques (played by Maron, Joubeau and Monnier in different ages) is bringing to visit his grandpa's grave and see his own name on the tombstone, as if the reincarnation just completes another circle. Demy's father Raymond (Dublet) is a mechanic and his mother Marilou (De Villepoix) is a coiffeuse, they own a garage and he has a younger brother Yvon (Delaroche, Averty in different ages). Most of the narrative is conveyed with unaffected naturalism by its cast under a blanched monochrome, with whimsical coloured-shots materialise irregularly and presumably function as indicators which influence Demy's life afterwards, like Theatre Guignol.

Varda's essayist construal of the biographical texts largely restores Jacquot's early years in a lifelike form, as a documentary made in 1930-40s, details mostly convivial vignettes with references in Demy's own distinguished oeuvre - in my case I only watched DONKEY SKIN (1970, 4/10) and THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1964, 7/10) - introduced and bookended by opposite pointing fingers respectively, and underlined with a miscellany of Demy's favourite classical music.

From a carefree child who enjoys marionette show, to a bit older in the Occupation period, becomes repulsive towards the war, then in the latter half, the film's focus shifts to the zealousness of cinema, not only a frequent spectator, the young Jacquot self-studies rudimentary knowledge of cinematography, makes his own live-action and animation shorts with a hand-hold camera bartered from an antique shop, and plays them at home on an ersatz screen set in the closet. Destiny has been kind to him, a chief struggle is his working-class father's initial disagreement of Demy's decision to throw himself into the movie business, but when he realises his son does have the talent, he is sensible enough to let him go to Paris, where the film eventually draws to a close.

JACQUOT DE NANTES is Varda's personal but endearing portrayal of her beloved husband, a farewell visual memoir of him, there are brief documentaries of an ailing Demy talking feebly in his last days, and near-end, the macro close-ups of his wrinkles, grey stubble and finally zoom in on his nebulous eyes, like a valedictory gaze during the final stage of a sacred catharsis to let him go, the film itself stands as a testimony of their ever-lasting love, poetically and romantically, it evokes great intimacy towards those we love and cherishes the time when we are together.

Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy were two well-known French directors who both pushed boundaries and consistently put out personal, stylistic films. They also happened to be married for about 30 years.

In 1990, Demy was tragically dying from HIV/AIDS. This film appears to have been made at least in part right before his death, as it features some documentary footage/interviews with him, but the bulk of the film isn't a documentary, and presents a somewhat fictionalised depiction of Demy's life as a boy, teenager, and then a young man. It aims to explore the important periods of his life that inspired his films, and serves as a love letter from a filmmaker wife to her filmmaker husband.

In telling a coming of age story about a young boy interested with making movies, this reminded me quite a bit of both Cinema Paradiso and the recent Steven Spielberg film The Fabelmans. I don't think it's quite as good as the latter, and it's definitely nowhere near as good as the former... but in the case of Cinema Paradiso, that honestly might just be the Ennio Morricone difference - his music sort of makes that film, and adds to the emotional impact of it all.

However, when considering the backstory behind Jacquot de Nantes, it becomes a good deal more touching and bittersweet, and at least some of that backstory is made clear in the text itself. It doesn't give you everything like a full-on documentary might, but you get enough context for things to be quite moving by the end. It's certainly a personal film and I can appreciate some of its emotional weight, but I think structurally and narratively, it can be kind of repetitive and even a little tedious in places.

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.