A part of this view­ing list: Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Spine #420: Agnès Varda’s Le Bon­heur.

After quite a long hia­tus from watch­ing Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion films [and an abortive reen­try with Noah Baumbach’s Kick­ing and Scream­ing], I got back into the swing of things with this charm­ingly men­ac­ing film by Agnès Varda. Fore­most, the film is beau­ti­ful to watch, with shifts in color sig­nal­ing shifts in theme, and a sub­jec­tive cin­e­matog­ra­phy that fur­ther refines the viewer’s atten­tion to exactly the bits that Varda is inter­ested in us being inter­ested in. Often a series of zip cuts will alert us to a character’s state of mind by show­ing us at what they are look­ing. For the most part those swift bits of ephemera are exactly what the char­ac­ter isn’t pay­ing atten­tion to, like the first time François vis­its Emilie’s apart­ment, he looks at every­thing but her, though we know she’s the only thing on his mind. A sim­i­lar tac­tic with a dif­fer­ent result is used the first time they go on a date. He stares at her chest while all else is out of focus and she speaks to him, he is out of focus while talk­ing as she observes the cou­ple behind him.

But for all of the quick cuts and strange uses of focus, the film pro­ceeds at a stately pace and seems to cover much more diegetic time than one short sum­mer. I think much of this feel­ing is accom­plished through the edit­ing, short scenes that con­sist of long takes result in cuts that elide time only, leav­ing space to be filled by the moments on screen. At one point a series of extreme close-​ups illus­trate the ping-​pong pro­gres­sion of François from wife to mis­tress and back. The grace of the edit­ing is fur­ther enhanced by the use of still lives. shots are framed and held in such a way that the mise-​en-​scèné becomes a char­ac­ter; a rum­pled bed, a kitchen win­dow, a flower arrange­ment, all are sig­ni­fiers for the true state of things. Lastly, an entire paper could be writ­ten on the use of Mozart; he isn’t a char­ac­ter in the film, but his music serves as nar­ra­tion and under­score for the emo­tional aspects of the sto­ry­line. I’ll leave it at that. It is bet­ter expe­ri­enced than described.

The story starts out in mun­dan­ity and con­tin­ues in this vein for the major­ity of the film. This focus on every­day activ­ity is the strongest emo­tive force; it sucks the viewer in with recog­ni­tion and betrays the viewer with the insid­i­ous same. It is a story about a happy fam­ily and the happy husband/​father who hap­pily starts a happy affair because he is so filled with hap­pi­ness. It even­tu­ally all comes out in the wash, with fairly pre­dictable con­se­quences, but the final few bits of the film turn the mun­dane into a psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror show for the viewer [but not for the char­ac­ters]. This mas­ter­stroke acts some­thing like a warn­ing for those who are look­ing for one, but seems more akin to doc­u­men­tary than moral­ity play to me.

• Drought de Seigneur — by Car­loss James Chamberlin
• Ger­ald Peary inter­views Agnès Varda
• Cri­te­rion Col­lec­tion Data­base info
• Agnès Varda Euro­pean Grad­u­ate School Lec­ture [6 parts]