Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Captivating movie !

Better Late Then Never

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This film is a marvelous tribute to an excellent director not well- enough known in the States. It is in French and the French moves very, very fast and the subtitles sometimes chop of some of the dialogue, be warned. It is a charming valentine from Agnes Varda to her late husband with many interviews of actors and actresses who worked with him. There is also, of course, the director discussing his own work and ideas. It's particularly interesting to hear what the director had in mind to film before each film starts and how he found it. This is NOT Nouvelle Vague material at all. First, it appeals to a large public and second, the characters don't all die at the end. It is not presented in chronological order, however...just reminiscences of a life well-spent in the company of many famous people who adored working for him and with him. What a rare pleasure!

Even those with no interest in Jacques Demy will be entertained and informed by the stellar cast that meander in and out of this miscellany comprised of old interviews and clips from several of Demy's movies both internationally celebrated and verging on the obscure. As a great admirer of French film I lapped up footage of such luminaries as Danielle Darrieux, Anouk Aimee, Jaques Perrin, Catherine Deneuve etc and having seen several of his oeuvre I was delighted to revisit titles like Peau d'Ane, Lola, Les Paraplueis de Cherbourg, Baie des Anges, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort etc. Whilst it is true that in some respects Agnes Varda comes on as something of a femme Sheridan Morely to Noel Coward she was actually married to the man rather than parasitic and she chronicles his life and work with love rather than avarice. In sum a minor joy.

Agnès Varda has over the past 20 years or so turned the lives and careers of both herself and her late husband Jacques Demy into something like a cottage industry; by my count at least 9 of her features and shorts from 1988 on have been directly autobiographical/biographical or essays on previous films. Many cineastes - particularly those allergic to nostalgia or to the filmmaker-as-critic might think such explorations to be excessively narcissistic - but they would be wrong I think. Each of the films that I've seen - "Jacquot de Nantes", "The Gleaners and I...Two Years Later", the short documentaries accompanying the Criterion disc of "Le bonheur", and this film - explore new ground, both intellectually and emotionally, and the careers of both filmmakers at this point stand as testaments to the value of intimate and repeated coverage of the same filmic territory - "film what you know." Most Americans will know only a few of Demy's films - "Lola", "Umbrellas of Cherbourg", "The Young Girls of Rochefort", "Donkey Skin" for example are the only ones I've seen - if they know any at all, so it was wonderful for me to learn that he had lived with his family in America for several years and made as many films in English as he did - given how generally unavailable - and poorly reviewed - much of his work is, I'd never bothered to look into much of it. Not that I wasn't interested, it was just a low priority, but Varda's film really gives one an idea of how much Demy's personality and obsessions - the city of Nantes, the American musical, fidelity, the tragedy of unrequited love - infuse even his lesser works; this reinvigorates my interest in getting hold of the other stuff, like his serious non-musical "Bay of Angels" (1963) or his serious political musical "Une chambre en ville" (1982). I'm also more interested in "Model Shop" (1969) knowing that it's the sequel to Lola, and that a very young Harrison Ford (interviewed for this film talking about his experience going into an LA sex shop with Demy as "research") was originally set to star in it.Whereas Jacquot was more specifically autobiographical and explored Demy's early life before he became a filmmaker through extended clips of a few of his films and recreations of his early life, L'universe de Jacques Demy is a more straightforward examination of Demy the filmmaker, with, as Varda says a meandering, achronological approach that flits from one famous film from the 60s to a flop from the 80s, back to Demy's early animations and then forward again to a TV commission from the late 70s. It's beautifully edited, Varda has a talent for getting her interview subjects to focus briefly on one film and then move on to another time frame, where she can only follow. Most of the reminiscences are from Demy himself (shot apparently before he got sick, probably in the early 1980s) and his most significant collaborators (Varda herself, Michel Legrand, Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, etc), but there are also loving recollections of his films from "ordinary" people and some personal observations from his sister and his and Varda's children. There's also a wonderful tying-together of the beginning and ending with three young women, seen separately at different points in the film and then together at the finish, talking about what this filmmaker they never met meant to them, with the camera finally panning to his grave. It's a tribute to Varda's restraint and control that this is one of the few moments designed to provoke emotion - but by the time we get to it, it's certainly well-deserved.I suppose I couldn't recommend this to anyone not already a fan of Demy and/or Varda, but to those few reading this who are, it's a must.

Like JACQUOT DE NANTES, this is a cinematic tribute by Agnes Varda to her late husband Jacques Demy, with some fascinating interviews and archive footage, moving back and forth chronologically from Demy's breakthrough film LOLA, to some of his later work including an abortive attempt to break through in Hollywood, with an interesting revelation about a then unknown American actor named Harrison Ford.I have only seen one Demy film so far, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, but this documentary makes me want to see some of his other work. So many of his films are very imaginatively made, and derive much from the great American musicals, yet few of them have been seen outside of France. This documentary is a touching tribute, particularly the letter read out at the beginning and end of the film.