‘Varda By Agnes': The Late Agnes Varda's Final Film is More TED Talk Than Doc [Review]

The late Agnes Varda is a legend of cinema. After all, her career has been filled with charming, but also immaculately provocative statements. The extensive body of work she’s built up over the years, which kept going until her death to cancer at age 90, has changed the landscape for not just narrative and non-fiction filmmaking, but female directors in general.

In her final film, “Varda By Agnes,” Varda looks back over her film and photography career in a doc that feels more like a TED Talk than an actual cinematic statement from Varda. A real shame, but regardless, a historic final document from a legend of the craft.

Sitting onstage at the Cartier Foundation in Paris, surrounded by a crowd of admiring up-and-coming film students, this two-hour film has Varda showing snippets of her work and explaining her motivations within that specific creative process. Of course, when re-capping such a monumental cinematic career, there has to be mention of the essentials, such as her 1985 masterpiece, “Vagabond,” with Sandrine Bonnaire and “Cleo from 5 to 7” which used time as a framing device to show the flaws any human being, man or woman, may have when fate comes knocking at the door.

One of the more amusing passages is her relaxed attitude towards one of her worst movies, “One Hundred and One Nights,” which starred Robert De Niro in terrible French dialogue romancing Catherine Deneuve.

Given the vast amount of films she directed over a span of five decades, the doc becomes almost anthological as it has on its mind the notion that this could be the final time we get to see Varda explaining, in her own words, her art and the intentions behind it. And yet, the film becomes repetitive as its goal is also to educate young filmmakers on the mindset and craft of a legend. That’s all fine and dandy, but in no way does “Varda By Agnes” have the brilliant whimsy of past docs, such as “Faces, Places,” “The Gleaners and I” and “The Beaches of Agnes” This is very much a film for completists only or people who are not that familiar with the work of the French New-Wave legend and would like a starting point. [C+]