94: Agnès Varda

My husband and I could make a decent mini Criterion closet out of the movies we own on disc. A lot of these movies are actual Criterion Blu-rays; the other movies we own are mostly movies that we've seen before and liked enough that, if we want to watch it again, we don't want to go through the rigamarole of figuring out whether the movie is streaming anywhere and if so, whether it's a streaming service we subscribe to. My Criterion-buying habit is similar to my book-buying habit, in that I buy books and movies alike as an expression of my aspiration to read or watch them. Both the unread book pile and the unwatched Criterion pile are carefully curated. I won't spend money on something I know I won't like, but all the same, the books and movies are a bit of a gamble, as though I'm placing a bet: I expect to like The Piano, Wildlife, and The Age of Innocence. They're all sitting on the Criterion shelf in our house, still wrapped in plastic, a bet that I have not yet followed through.

Until last night, the Criterion Agnès Varda box set was one such plastic-wrapped monster waiting on the shelf. I've seen a couple of her movies; Cléo from 5 to 7 is a favorite of mine. Last year during one of Criterion's flash sales, I pooled together some gift codes and finally bought the box set, which collects her full-length films and shorts and TV work together, sorted thematically: her work with and about her husband Jacques Demy, the movies she made when the two spent some strange years in Hollywood in the late 1960s, her experiments ahead of the crest of the French New Wave. Last night we chose to watch The Beaches of Agnès, a sort of retrospective memoir of her life and work. It helps to have some familiarity with who she was as a person and an artist, but I also found it to be an excellent introduction to Varda's work from her own perspective. It's playfully edited, frank, and funny.

We're going to try working our way through more of the physical media we've been collecting this year. Break the disc-buying habit, watch the stuff we already have on our shelves. I already know we have a wealth waiting for us with Varda.

What I wrote:

For Seeing & Believing, I wrote about Ethan Coen's solo fiction debut, Drive-Away Dolls.

What I talked about:

I also returned to the Almost Major podcast to talk about the 1989 alien abduction movie Communion starring Christopher Walken.

What I'm playing:

Tears of the Kingdom has a death grip on my spare time. I'm trying to savor it, but I want to explore every little crevice in this world, which is tricky whenever monsters start popping out of the woodwork. A free idea for Nintendo: a sandbox version of Tears of the Kingdom, a la Minecraft.