Why we must remember the radical tenderness of Agnès Varda

When I was seventeen, I saw my first Agnès Varda film: Le Bonheur (1965). In strikingly vibrant colour, Le Bonheur tells the story of a woman whose husband easily replaces her after having an affair. I was blown away. What struck me most was the intelligence and sensitivity. Depicting a complex marital relationship while never shying away from the cruelty of a man who finds women to be interchangeable, I felt equally moved and enraged. For the first time, it felt like I was watching a film that was articulating something real and pressing, and thatarticulation could have only come from a woman.

I continued to explore Varda’s filmography, from French new wave staples such as Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) and La Pointe Courte (1959), to her later autobiographical documentaries, like Les Plages d’Agnès (2008) and The Gleaners and I (2000). Again, I was enraptured by Varda’s work From making the first film of the French new wave to her decades long career as a filmmaker, photographer, producer, and installation artist, Agnès Varda was one of the most important women in cinema. Having experienced Varda’s films, I was suddenly aware of a lack in my own cinephilia: women, who I could relate to, who privileged my experience, and who were outspoken politically in a way I had never seen in a film by a man at that point.

This is not to say that Varda was perfect. As a woman of colour, I soon became aware of the lack of representation I could find in the majority of Varda’s oeuvre. Her documentary Black Panthers (1968) is a major exception, but can be contrasted to One Hundred and One Nights (1995), a celebration of the history of cinema which devotes its focus to white European and American films, while making a number of racist jokes. Equally outdated is her feminist short, Women Reply (1975), which, though powerful in the explicitly political assertions it makes, presents an all-white group of women to represent their whole gender, while repeatedly positioning a woman’s identity as tied to her biology. The feminism of Varda’s oeuvre could never be described as all-encompassing.

But to acknowledge the problems in Varda’s cinema is to understand it. To demand perfection from women filmmakers is to put them to a standard that we do not hold for men, and it flattens their complexity and context into a simplistic ideal. Agnès Varda is not someone we can contemplate through a single lens, and I am saddened when I see her pigeonholed. Far too often, she was depicted as nothing more than a cute old lady. From her start, she was labelled as the “grandmother of the French new wave,” despite being its originator and contemporary, rather than a predecessor. More recently, she was seen as gently quirky, with her two-toned hair and love of cats, attached to innocuous films like Faces Places (2017), or to fun cardboard cutouts at award shows. She was more than this. But to define her as the complete opposite, as purely radical, angry, and political, is to miss the point. She can be all these things, for if there is any way to characterise Agnès Varda, it would be by her humanity. She was whimsical and fun, while also political. She was alternately tender and outraged. She was a feminist who still had her shortcomings. She was a revolutionary innovator who made some of the most important films in cinema history, while also being able to make mistakes.

My own feelings for Varda have waned somewhat since my high school days — my cinematic interests have grown and changed. But I have retained a deep respect for Agnès Varda, and her work. In her iconic status, she achieved something that few women have, which is less an indicator of her superiority and more one of the difficulty for women in the film industry to receive any recognition. Outspoken, creative, and curious, Varda’s unique greatness reminds of us the need for women in film. In the name of her legacy, perhaps we can all be more open to cinematic space for complex, challenging women.

Chelsea Phillips-Carr edits Cléo Journal. You can find more of her writing here.