DVD La Pointe Courte

5 Star

A full three years before the French New Wave began, Agnès Varda directed this rarely-seen film on a shoestring budget, edited with the help of Alain Resnais, and now acknowledged as a key stylistic precursor to the New Wave. La Pointe Courte also features Philippe Noiret’s first significant appearance, essentially his debut, in the co-lead role.

"A fully realised modernist work with no amateur trappings, and a critical progenitor of the French New Wave."

In a small fishing village in Southern France, a man (Philippe Noiret) and a woman (Silvia Monfort) arrive for a vacation in the man’s hometown. But after five years of marriage, the passion has diminished, and the woman declares that they should separate, an inauspicious start to their holiday.

Interspersed is the story of the village families: Jules, a stern father, butts heads with health inspectors; young Raphael is jailed for violating a fishing ordinance; and Jules’s 16-year-old daughter Anna is in love with Raphael.

The film alternates between the couple analysing the dissipation of their romantic love, and the villagers doing their work- fishing, sorting the catch, doing chores – and the intrigues and difficulties of the villagers’ lives…

In the opening shot, Agnès Varda’s camera glides slowly through an empty alley, ducking under hanging laundry, to introduce us to ‘La Pointe Courte’. Thus, the fishing village, a place where Varda had spent time growing up, is established as one of the main characters. With alternating chapters inspired by Faulkner’s novel Wild Palms, a couple’s detailed self-examination is juxtaposed against a neorealist portrayal of village life.

The setting is lovingly portrayed by a camera frequently in motion, exploring. For a director with little or no training, the ease with which Varda manipulates her camera is refreshing and indicates a great talent blossoming in her first movie. Her writing displays equal skill and a modernist sensibility in the couple’s intellectualized discussion. The dialogue of Noiret and Monfort’s lines is stylized, especially in comparison to the villagers’ natural, earthy banter. By also shooting the couple in carefully staged, formal compositions, Varda creates a distinctly Brechtian effect, which forces the viewer into active contemplation of the film’s themes.

The documentary-like observations of the villagers’ lives is no small feat within a film that already has so much going on. We experience a keen sense of the implements of fishing, the sorting and distribution of the catch, the boats gliding on the water, the women washing the laundry on riverbanks – even the lives of the numerous stray cats. Key to the film’s argument is that we must understand where we come from. This is literalized in the couple’s conversation, on this trip back to the man’s home. Varda’s observations of how couples engage and grow together is extraordinarily keen. While the subject is common to several New Wave films, Varda achieves a fuller representation than the average, and the film easily begs a second viewing to absorb it all.

The style is also anticipatory of Hiroshima Mon Amour, without the overt political content. If there are any politics, it’s in the critical self-examination and the idea of exploring the past from which you came, a hallmark of left-wing analysis.

Amongst other appealing qualities is an eerie, avant-garde clarinet score that adds to the ‘Left Bank’ feel.

Despite playing at Cannes, the film was not released for another couple of years in France, and then only in one theatre. It’s like the French New Wave had started, but it didn’t enter the public consciousness until The 400 Blows and Breathless. But this film is every bit the kin of the French New Wave. If there is any difference, it’s in the formalism, possibly an inheritance of Ingmar Bergman and a bit of Alain Resnais’s short film style. However, Bergman was only in the first stage of his career, pre-Seventh Seal, and one doesn’t know if Varda had even seen his films. The film is more likely the product of modernist strains in literature and art. As such, it lacks the loose, devil-may-care style that helped Breathless to find an audience first, the success of which enabled films like this to be more easily embraced.

Amongst other appealing qualities is an eerie, avant-garde clarinet score that adds to the ‘Left Bank’ feel, and is similar to Alain Resnais’s use of music. The clarinets are the instrument of choice for the villagers, and the score is partially derived from their folk music. The film begins with this music and significantly ends on it, a reminder of how much neorealism and documentary is of importance to the film.

Philippe Noiret and Silvia Monfort both act extremely well, and one can already see Noiret as a singular talent and distinctive presence. Given the natural environment, and even the occasional distraction of a mischievous cat trying to steal scenes, they don’t drop out of their deeply emotional states for a second, especially Monfort, whose character is in greater turmoil. The rest of the actors are non-professionals, and actual inhabitants of the village. They are, unfortunately, overdubbed by voice actors because the film was shot without direct sound. In some cases, their performances are excellent, while in others amateurish, but either way, Varda captures the real spirit of these people and gives us a snapshot in time, another brilliant choice.

La Pointe Courte is the rarely seen first film by Agnès Varda, a fully realised modernist work with no amateur trappings, and a critical progenitor of the French New Wave. It magically weaves a loving documentary-like portrait of a southern fishing village with a Brechtian examination of love after five years of marriage.