The Collection:

The Criterion Collection adds another great entry to its growing output of lavish box sets. In 2014, the company released The Essential Jacques Demy, highlighting the French filmmaker's best-known features. That excellent collection is now easily topped by Criterion's presentation of the work created by Demy's spouse, The Complete Films of Agnès Varda. Thirty-nine films are collected: shorts and features, fiction and documentary (with some bleed between those two distinctions, of course).

As Criterion did with their 2018 box set, Ingmar Bergman's Cinema, they have chosen not to present these films in strict chronological order. Instead, each of the set's 15 discs has a theme. As one progresses through all these discs, the connections between the films -- and not only those that have been included together -- become clearer. This makes Agnès Varda's output feel like one large, multi-part artwork. I feel like the many parts have been curated with care, so I will review the contents of the set in the presented disc order.

Also included is the 11-minute short, Les 3 Boutons (The 3 Buttons), from 2015. It is Varda's last fictional film, and it is a whimsical tale of a young teenage girl who works on a farm and muses about everyday magic and her own personal powers.

Both films are presented in AVC-encoded 1080p 1.85:1 transfers that look excellent. Some of the clips in Varda by Agnès are taken from SD video, so there are some to-be-expected inborn issues there. The feature is presented in French DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround, which offers some nice ambience in the rear, but the film is mostly driven by Varda's narration up front. The short features lossy French Dolby 2.0 stereo audio, which is suitable enough for this intimate adventure. Both films have optional English subtitles. There are a few stray English phrases in Varda by Agnès that are left unsubtitled.

Disc 1 Special Features:

• The Art of Family Life: Rosalie Varda and Mathieu Demy (HD, 17:26) - The children of Agnès Varda talk about their life and film work with their mother. Rosalie, who is the spitting image of Agnès, also talks about guiding her mother's later projects to fruition.


• Telluride Film Festival panel (HD, 39:26) - Annette Insdorf moderates a panel of Rosalie Varda, Mathieu Demy, Martin Scorsese, and Telluride co-founder Tom Luddy, who all share personal memories of Agnès Varda. Scorsese rambles a bit, but of course you'd expect him to.


• Agnes Varda's Credit Sequences (HD upscale, 8:03) - A video essay by Alex Vuillaume-Tylski which examines the openings and closings of Varda's films.


• Sensing Bodies (HD upscale, 1:50) - A brief montage-essay, showing the way Varda isolates and highlights different aspects of the human body in her work.


• A Chat with Nini (HD, 0:30) - A cute vignette of Varda interrogating her cat.


• Trailers - for Varda by Agnès and the Janus Films retrospective of her work.

In the supplements, Varda talks about having trouble breaking into the film industry after La Pointe Courte. She took a few work-for-hire travelogue gigs in 1958 just to keep at it, and they are included here. O Saisons, O Châteaux (Oh seasons, oh castles) explores the castles in the Loire Valley. Since most of her subjects are giant stone edifices, Varda gets playful with her color camerawork and editing in a self-conscious way that absolutely must have had an impact on Wes Anderson's style -- and probably François Truffaut's along the way. The French Riviera doc Du Côté De La Côte (Coasting Along the Coast) is even more colorful and adopts a charming goofiness in its commentary and editing that is reminiscent of Bruce Brown's documentaries like The Endless Summer. In both of these, you can see Varda playing around with what she can smuggle stylistically into her assignments -- and some of the play is truly inspired. However, one can't help but feel a little antsy to see Varda making movies that are wholly her own.

All three films are presented in AVC-encoded 1080p 1.37:1 transfers that look excellent. La Pointe Courte has image flutter and a few density issues that are presumably irreparable flaws of the negative, due to the film's shooting conditions. The shorts are presented in richly saturated and well-delineated color. All the presentations are otherwise clean and stable. The feature is presented in French LPCM mono audio, while the shorts are left with lossy French Dolby Digital mono tracks. Some age-related narrowness on the main feature, but even with lower-res audio, the music-and-narration-driven shorts sound great. Optional English subtitles on all the films.

Disc 2 Special Features:

• Mathieu Amalric and Agnès Varda (HD, 8:59) - Actor-director Amalric discusses La Pointe Courte with Varda. Varda offers brief anecdotes about her writing process for the film, then discusses the pitfalls of being a first-time director with Amalric.


• Agnès Varda on La Pointe Courte (HD upscale, 15:43) - Recorded in 2007 for Criterion's 4 by Agnès Varda box set. She talks about her experiences getting to know the fishermen, basing the film's unconventional structure on that of William Faulkner's The Wild Palms, making a guerrilla film with less money than the film really required, and convincing Alain Resnais to edit the film for nothing.


• Cinéastes de Notres Temps (HD upscale, 8:50) - A 1964 excerpt from the French TV show, in which Varda discusses making La Pointe Courte and the difficulty of translating its critical popularity into further work in film.


• Jhumpa Lahiri on La Pointe Courte (HD, 3:54) - Author Lahiri offers an appreciation of the film as part of her Adventures in Moviegoing picks for the Criterion Channel.


• Intros for O Saisons, O Châteaux and Du Côté De La Côte (HD upscale, 3:32 total) - From 2007. Varda talks about how she came to make these travelogue films.

Varda divides the film in two. In the first half, Cléo remains wrapped-up in her self-centered pop star mindset. She cares most about how she looks and how she is perceived. In the second half, she begins to register more of what is happening in the world around her as she grows more empathetic toward others -- and herself. The films plays out as a series of encounters, divided up into explicitly timed chapters. The most charming might be Cléo's meeting with her songwriting team, including the film's composer Michel Legrand as a playfully irreverent version of himself. The youthful verve of Varda's storytelling merges surprisingly well with the existential searching of her main character, which suggests why the film remains resonant to this day.

Pardon the cliché, but Paris is arguably the main co-star of Cléo, so the film is complimented by other works that Varda made showing off Parisian architecture and design. The first is Les Fiancés du Pont MacDonald, set on the titular MacDonald Bridge. This is a very slightly longer cut of the silent-movie interlude featured within Cléo, when Cléo and her friend drop off some film to a projectionist then watch the screen from his booth. For her mock-silent comedy, Varda cast New Wave pals Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, Eddie Constantine, Sammi Frey, and Jean-Claude Brialy. Included next is Varda's experimental musical documentary/fiction hybrid, L'Opéra-Mouffe (1958). She combines footage of the inhabitants of a skid row neighborhood with her own musings and fantasies about her first pregnancy, and then sets everything to music. In the accompanying interviews, she notes The Threepenny Opera as her influence, and Georges Delerue's songs have a strong Brecht/Weill flavor to them. Then we jump ahead to 1984's Les Dites Cariatides (The So-called Caryatids), in which Varda is commissioned to examine Paris's caryatids, an architectural feature in which pillars are sculpted in the shape of women. The style Varda utilizes falls perfectly in-between her early travelogues and her later docs, with Varda still designing some eye-grabbing shots and edits complimented by her idiosyncratic narration. The final film on the disc is a 1986 quickie, produced for the Cinemathèque Française, called T'as de Beaux Escaliers, Tu Sais (You've Got Beautiful Stairs, You Know). It juxtaposes shots of cinema patrons walking up and down the Cinemathèque's staircases with other shots of stairs from films.

Now lets get technical. Cléo and Beaux Escaliers are both presented in AVC-encoded 1080p 1.66:1 transfers, while the other shorts are presented at 1.37:1. Les Fiancés and Beaux Escaliers both look like they've been upscaled from SD sources, but the feature and other shorts all have had new restorations and scans that are crisp and satisfying. As with Disc 2, the feature is presented in French LPCM mono while the shorts are presented in lossy Dolby 2.0. No complaints. Optional English subtitles on all the films.

Disc 3 Special Features:

• Cléo from 5 to 7: Remembrances (HD upscale, 36:01) - Agnès Varda reflects on the making of Cléo in 2005 along with the cast and crew. They revisit locations and talk about the logistics of making the film, including making sure the geography and visible clocks all made sense for the real-time conceit. Varda and star Corinne Marchand talk about the themes and the main character.


• Madonna, c'est Madonna clip (HD upscale, 2:24) - An excerpt from a 1993 French TV special in which Varda and Madonna discuss an abandoned remake of Cléo that would have been a vehicle for the pop star.


• Cléo's Real Path Through Paris (HD upscale, 9:17) - Famous French cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn retraces Cléo's journey on a motorbike in 2005.


• The Music of Michel Legrand (9:38) - A video essay made for FilmStruck in 2006 by Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos. It's a concise and thoughtful breakdown of how Legrand's music reflects the mindset of Cléo throughout the film.


• Cléo from 5 to 7 Trailer


• Agnès on Les Fiancés, L'Opéra-Mouffe, Les Dites Cariatides, and T'as de Beaux Escaliers, Tu Sais (HD upscale, 6:11 total) - The director offers some background on these shorts.


• Les Dites Cariatides Bis (HD upscale, 2:16) - A brief video from 2005 showing off more caryatids in Paris.

There is also some magic to be found in the 2003 short Le Lion Volatil (The Vanishing Lion). Set in Place Denfert-Rochereau, this comic romance follows a psychic-in-training, played by Julie Depardieu. She falls for a guard at the Paris Catacombs who is fond of sleight-of-hand. This should be a tip-off, but Depardieu is soon shocked when both the man and the nearby Lion of Belfort statue both disappear without a trace.

Daguerréotypes is presented in an AVC-encoded 1080p 1.37:1 transfer, while Le Lion Volatil is presented at 1.85:1. Le Lion also looks like it is probably an upscale from SD, maybe because some coloring and visual effects in the short were finished on video rather than film or HD. Daguerréotypes meanwhile looks very good for a 16mm transfer; a little grainy but strong color and detail. The feature is presented with French LPCM mono audio while the short has a lossy Dolby 2.0 stereo mix. Optional English subtitles are available for both.

Disc 4 Special Features:

• Rue Daguerre in 2005 (HD upscale, 21:31) - Part update, part reminiscence, and part audio commentary over certain sequences from Daguerréotypes. There is also a great scene where Agnès reads some hate mail while getting her hair colored.


• Bread, Painting, and Accordion (HD upscale, 8:02) - Another 2005 update on the bakery and accordion shop on Rue Daguerre. It also includes a clip from Jane B. par Agnès V. shot in the bakery.


• Daguerreotypes: Photographic Objects (HD upscale, 6:00) - A look at an exhibit of Daguerreotypes and a brief history of the art form.


• The Music Festival (HD upscale, 3:29) - A brief vignette of street music shot by Agnès in 2005, with a bunch of little kids dancing around.


• Intro to Le Lion Volatil (HD upscale, 1:44) - Agnès talks about how the removal of the Lion of Belfort statue for cleaning inspired her story. She also touches on how the film was intended for the omnibus Paris, je t'aime, only to have the producer turn "traitor." In response she says, "The film ended up being short and independent, like me."

Her follow-up feature, Les Créatures (1966), was a critical and financial failure upon release. But it has an unsettling energy akin to Le Bonheur that makes it hard to dismiss. That said, it's not as good as it could be. Varda's ambition is maybe a little too vast. This tale centers on a novelist and his traumatized wife, recovering from a car accident in a small village. Michel Piccoli plays the writer. His encounters with the locals take on a strange animosity, which starts to inspire his work. Catherine Deneuve is the wife, rendered mute after the accident. It's kind of a thankless part, especially without dialogue, but Deneuve makes her character naturally luminous. It's fun to see Eva Dahlbeck, who frequently worked with Ingmar Bergman in the '50s, as the proprietor of the local hotel. As the film develops, it takes more of a science-fiction turn and reveals its metafictional intent. The whole thing is an allegory for the creative process, you see. There's some fun to be had in determining if what we're seeing at any moment is supposed to be real or supposed to be part of Piccoli's developing novel. However, the most outlandish moments don't fully land because we already know they are just Piccoli's make-'em-ups. The stakes are diminished. It's not enough to sink the whole picture, which remains agreeably offbeat and brain-teasing.

The final film included on this disc is the short documentary Elsa La Rose (1966). The film is a portrait of the then-70-year-old writer Elsa Triolet, as filtered through the writing and poetry of her husband, the surrealist Louis Aragon. While Aragon idealizes his wife, Varda also talks with Elsa about her role as a muse and mentor to her husband. It's unsurprising that she doesn't like the way he puts her on an artistic pedestal, but their fondness and warmth is palpable even so.

Technically, each of the films is satisfyingly remastered, although the specs are all different. Le Bonheur is presented in an AVC-encoded 1080 1.66:1 transfer that features vivid color cinematography with saturated reds, bright sunflower yellows, and some strikingly cool blues. The audio is French LPCM mono, with optional English subtitles. Les Créatures comes in a black-and-white AVC-encoded 1080p 2.35:1 transfer. Varda's only 'scope film. Certain sequences feature pink and red tinting -- which can be a little hard to distinguish from each other (one is supposed to represent good, the other evil) -- but otherwise the contrast and clarity is good. The audio is French LPCM mono, with optional English subtitles. Elsa La Rose is sourced from black-and-white 16mm, with an AVC-encoded 1080p 1.37:1 transfer. There are some minor photographic issues due to the documentary style of shooting, but the restoration and transfer look accurate. The sound for the short is only lossy French Dolby mono with optional English subtitles.

Disc 5 Special Features:

• Agnès talks about Le Bonheur (HD upscale, 3:01) - A 1998 intro for German TV. She talks about her inspiration for the film, and a young German boy helps translate some of it for the TV audience.


• The Two Women of Le Bonheur (HD upscale, 6:10) - Rosalie Varda-Demy interviews the two female leads in 2006. They are mostly quite pleased with the film and the debate that it sparked. Claire Drouot says it was a positive landmark for her family.


• Thoughts on Le Bonheur (HD upscale, 15:04) - Four intellectuals -- Michèle Manceaux, Frédéric Bonnaud, Gérard Vaugeois, Fadela Amara -- discuss and pick apart the film.


• Happiness? The People of Fontenay Respond (HD upscale, 5:53) - From 2005. Agnès takes a survey of people who live in the city where Le Bonheur was shot to see what they think happiness is.


• Bonheur: Proper Noun or Concept (HD upscale, 1:35) - More reflections on the concept of happiness.


• Jean-Claude Drouot Returns to Fontenay-Aux-Roses (HD upscale, 10:25) - Le Bonheur's star returns to the shooting locations in 2005.


• Démons et Merveilles du Cinéma excerpt (HD upscale, 4:10) - A TV clip highlighting Varda on set directing Le Bonheur. She adds new text commentary over the footage.


• Trailer for Le Bonheur


• Intro to Les Créatures (HD upscale, 2:42) - From 2012. Agnès discusses her inspirations for the film and offers minor regrets that she didn't push her premise far enough.


• Varda on Set (HD upscale, 18:41) - More like "Varda in Post-Production." An excerpt from a French TV doc from 1965, showing Agnès shooting pickups with Michel Piccoli and working with the composer and conductor on the score, which is somehow orchestrated by punch-card computer (that part kinda confused me).


• Intro to Elsa La Rose (HD upscale, 2:10) - Varda discusses how this was intended as part of a diptych with the other part to be shot by her husband. She shares her memories of the couple and her direction to Michel Piccoli to read his narration faster and faster.

In general, these films do look and sound better than the DVD versions, although they are presumably sourced from the same restoration as the SD iterations. Because this is a lot of material to cram onto one disc, the encoding bitrates aren't as high as those for some of the other films in this set. Still, these five films all look good in motion. The documentaries -- Uncle Yanco, Black Panthers, and Mur Murs -- are all presented in AVC-encoded 1080p 1.37:1 transfers, while the fiction (or meta-fiction) films -- Lions Love and Documenteur -- are both framed 1.66:1. All five films feature LPCM mono audio options. For Uncle Yanco, Mur Murs, and Documenteur, these lossless tracks are in French with optional English subtitles. (Mur Murs has French narration and English-language interviews; the latter are left without subtitles.) These three films can also be watched with lossy English Dolby mono dubs that are generally less pleasing than the original audio. Black Panthers and Lions Love are presented in English with optional English SDH.

Disc 6 Special Features:

• Intros to Uncle Yanco, Black Panthers, Lions Love, Mur Murs (HD upscale 5:37 total)


• Viva Varda (HD upscale, 9:16) - Agnès and Viva lounge on a bed and talk about Lions Love in this 1970 French TV interview.


• Two Street Artists (HD upscale, 5:23) - A brief profile of two late-'00s street artists in Paris, Jérôme Mesnager and Miss.Tic.


• Mur Murs Trailer

The films look and sound as good as they did on last year's Blu-ray. Maybe they sound even better, because I think the shorts might have had lossy audio before. Either way, One Sings and Plaisir are both presented in strong AVC-encoded 1080p 1.66:1 transfers, while the intended-for-TV Réponse is framed at 1.33:1. All films have French LPCM mono audio mixes, with optional English subtitles.

Disc 7 Bonus Features:

• Nausicaa (HD upscale, 1:38:25) - The workprint version of an unreleased 1970 TV film, concerning the aftermath of the military coup in Greece. Part documentary, part semi-autobiographical fiction, part Brechtian satire. It touches on a lot of the concerns -- socially, politically, and artistically -- of Agnès's California films from this era. The film elements were confiscated before completion, but arguably this could have stood as one of her best features had she been allowed to complete it. Also it's interesting to see a young and scruffy Gerard Depardieu as a bohemian asshole who rips off the main character.


• Women Are Naturally Creative (HD, 47:22) - This is an excellent documentary portrait of Agnès Varda, at work on One Sings, the Other Doesn't and at home. A pure joy to watch her in her element.


• One Sings, the Other Doesn't Trailer


• Intros to Réponse de Femmes and Plaisir d'Amour en Iran from 2007 (HD upscale, 2:13 total)

Accompanying Vagabond is a surrealistic short from 1984. 7p., cuis., s. de b., ... (à saisir) (7rm., kitch., bath., ... (for sale)) is a fragmented look at a dysfunctional family whose experiences seem to haunt an empty house. The film was actually shot inside an art installation inside an old rest home, but Varda uses the surreal juxtaposition of the altered rooms (a bathroom covered in feathers, a kitchen covered in grass) to intensify her dream-logic ghost story. The film also includes appearances by Yolande Moreau and Marthe Jarias, who both found their way into Vagabond.

Both the feature and the short are presented in AVC-encoded 1080p 1.66:1 transfers. Because of its winter setting, Vagabond is relatively gray and sedate, but both films have nicely saturated colors. Vagabond is presented in a well-supported French LPCM mono mix, while the short film has a good but lossy Dolby mono mix. Optional English subtitles are available for both films.

Disc 8 Special Features:

• Vagabond: Remembrances (HD upscale, 40:37) - From 2003. A mixture of (then-)new interviews, revisits of film locations, and some archival clips.


• The Story of an Old Lady (HD upscale, 3:48) - A brief interview with Marthe Jarnias, who appears in both Vagabond and 7p. The footage was shot on 16mm that has gotten moldy, but the degradation looks cool.


• Music and Dolly Shots (HD upscale, 12:16) - Agnès discusses with composer Joanna Bruzdowicz the 12 dolly shots which punctuate Vagabond and the music that was utilized to link them thematically. All 12 shots are then shown back-to-back with the score mixed prominently.


• To Nathalie Sarraute (HD upscale, 9:18) - Clips from a 1986 radio interview with Agnès and author Nathalie Sarraute, who was a creative role model for the project.


• Plotting in Vagabond (HD 15:28) - An episode of Observations on Film Art for Criterion Channel. Professor David Bordwell examines the way that Vagabond utilizes three different narrative strategies to create a compelling if incomplete portrait of its main character.


• Vagabond Trailer


• Intro to 7p., cuis., s. de b., ... à saisir (HD upscale, 2:10) - She describes the inspiration for the surreal and broken narrative of 7p., and calls it a "totally free film."

The fiction film Kung-Fu Master! (1988), which grew out of the making of Jane B., also carries this feeling of a diary entry realized mostly for an audience of two. In Jane B., Birkin talks about giving Varda a short story she wrote a few years earlier. It involved a 40-year-old woman who fell in love with a 14-year-old boy. What might have served as fodder for another vignette in the Jane B. portrait collage metamorphosed into a full-fledged feature of its own. In fleshing out Birkin's story into a script, Varda tried to ground it in the reality of the world of 14-year-old boys. So, she made the object of affection obsessed with an arcade game called Kung-Fu Master. This film also became a kind of family project, as Varda's son Mathieu Demy was cast as the boy, and Birkin's daughters, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon (then ages 16 and 5 respectively), played the daughters of her character. The end result is both sensitively realized and terribly uncomfortable. Varda does not distance herself or viewers from the real-life stakes of such a situation, but she also finds a narrow path in which the plight of her characters is more touching than disgusting. Because of his childishness -- which is naturally part of the point -- I found the scenes with Demy's character less compelling than those between Birkin and Gainsbourg. For me, that mother-daughter strife is the key relationship in the film.

Technically, both films are sourced from the same restorations that Cinelicious put out on Blu-ray back in 2016. That release put each film on its own disc, so the bitrates were higher. These AVC-encoded 1080p 1.66:1 transfers do not suffer too much in comparison. The French (with English) LPCM mono audio sounds good on both films. The optional English subtitles are only available for the dialogue spoken in French.

Disc 9 Special Features:

• Intros to Jane B. par Agnès V. and Kung-Fu Master! (HD upscale, 4:13 total) - From 2012.


• Agnès V. by Jane B. (HD, 15:30) - A new interview with Jane Birkin. She talks about the creation of the two films and describes Jane B. as more of a portrait of Agnès in which she was a pliable model. She describes Kung-Fu Master! as a sort of time capsule, capturing their children at a turning point in their lives. She also talks about her continued relationship with Agnès after the completion of the films. It's a touching tribute that presents Agnès as a sensitive and often exasperating person.


• Jane B. / Kung-Fu Master! Double Feature Trailer


• Bonsoir clip (HD upscale, 17:40) - A pleasant and slightly raucous interview with Agnès and Jane on Swiss TV discussing the films. There is also a fun montage of trims from the two films.

The film also shows the burgeoning of Jacques's filmmaking. Young Jacques's attempt at a live-action short film fails when he screws up his camera's exposure, so he sneaks up into the attic to make stop-motion films where he can control every element. His father forces him into a technical school, to follow in the family business and become a mechanic. But despite the lack of support, and the ongoing tumult of World War II, Jacques finds his calling.

The two documentaries about Jacques that Agnès made around this time have previously appeared in Criterion's Essential Jacques Demy box as supplements. The Young Girls Turn 25 looks back at the making of Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort. The small town of Rochefort organizes twenty-fifth anniversary events and an outdoor screening, inviting Agnès, Catherine Deneuve, and some others to attend. Agnès takes the opportunity to interview the locals who were involved in the film as extras. She also includes some behind-the-scenes footage she shot at the time. As a big fan of Demy's film, this is an invitation to delight in it all over again. Inevitably, there's an air of melancholy too, considering the death of Jacques and Catherine Deneuve's sister and costar Françoise Dorléac. One of the key moments from The Young Girls Turn 25 is Agnès's quiet observation and appreciation of a familiar image of Jacques putting on his sweater while directing. The second doc, The World of Jacques Demy, was expressively conceived as the nonfiction counterpoint to Jacquot de Nantes. It's a non-chronological exploration of Demy's film work that riffs on memories and intuition to connect the different projects together. Agnès interviews a number of Jacques's collaborators, but the most unexpected talking head is Harrison Ford, looking very much like Steven Spielberg. Ford explains how he was supposed to be the lead in Model Shop before the studio claimed he had no future in film.

Jacquot de Nantes and The World of Jacques Demy are both presented in great-looking AVC-encoded 1080p 1.66:1 transfers. The Young Girls is framed 1.37:1 with clips from the Demy film presented letterboxed within that frame. All films are presented in French LPCM mono with optional English subtitles. Bring sections in English are not subtitled.

Disc 10 Special Features:

• Agnès Tells the Sad and Happy Adventure Behind the Film Jacquot de Nantes (HD upscale, 17:05) - An interview with Agnès about the making of the film that also includes a new discussion with some of the core crew and the actors who played Jacques's parents.


• Souvenirs and Evocations (HD upscale, 6:35) - Three filmmakers discuss their early experiments with filmmaking as children.


• Jacquot de Nantes Trailer


• Intros to The Young Girls Turn 25 and The World of Jacques Demy (HD upscale, 2:54 total) - From 2012.

Agnès throws in a side-plot, in which Gayet's character attempts to swindle Simon out of his fortune to help pay for the Tarantino-esque short film of her boyfriend (Mathieu Demy), but mostly the film is surreal vignettes, assorted clips, and quippy dialogue about great (mostly French) movies. The tone is loopy, self-referential, and celebratory -- like a late-period Jean-Luc Godard film, but fun. (Of her New Wave pal JLG, Agnès has Simon Cinéma comment, "That Swiss guy talks like a book.")

Technically, One Hundred and One Nights looks and sounds real darn great. The AVC-encoded 1080p 1.66:1 transfer boasts rich colors and excellent clarity. The soundtrack is French LPCM 2.0 stereo with optional English subtitles.

Disc 11 Special Features:

• A Fun Moment and Michel Piccoli (HD upscale, 8:38) - A brief piece in which Agnès reflects on her intentions for the film and for the character of Simon Cinéma. It includes some interview bits with Piccoli about the character.


• Set Visits (HD upscale, 11:04) - This is actually three pieces stuck together. The first is titled "A Gust of Wind and Marcello Mastroianni," and like the Piccoli piece, it includes an interview with the Italian star in addition some behind-the-scenes of a stormy sequence. The second is a round-up of all the stars who appeared in the film, with Agnès offering commentary. The third is called "The Three D's: Deneuve, De Niro, Delon." It includes behind-the-scenes of the Deneuve and De Niro boat scene which also appears (slightly abridged) in the Varda by Agnès doc, plus on-set footage of Alain Delon's scene.


• One Hundred and One Nights Trailer - Pretty poor and deceptive. You can tell why audiences either stayed away or felt disappointed when they showed up.


• From Rooster to Donkey: Hands and Objects (HD upscale, 20:11) - A three-way conversation between Agnès, Anne Huet, and Alain Bergala about Agnès's short films that literally just shows the participants' hands and objects they pass between them.


• Unfinished Varda (HD upscale, 10:41 total) - Footage from two unfinished projects, a surreal love story called La Melangite and a Christmas-set film co-starring a young and scruffy Gerard Depardieu called Christmas Carole, plus two commercials.

The film mostly profiles poor French citizens, who pick up potatoes rejected by the local farm or who scavenge the trash at farmer's markets. But from there, Agnès also investigates those who grab grapes to make wine for pleasure and those who scavenge ideologically, because they hate to see edible food go to waste. The film demonstrates that France has a long history of legal gleaning; Agnès even shows many instances where it is the subject of famous French paintings. Further connecting gleaning to art, she talks to creators of varying levels of prestige who use found objects in their visual art.

The Gleaners was a surprise worldwide success, so Agnès made a follow-up for the DVD release, The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (2002). This film touches on the outpouring of mail and positive reactions toward The Gleaners. This inspires Agnès to visit some of the people who sent her mail. She also checks in with many of the people she talked to in the first film. Many of them had since seen the film. Most of them seem pleased, but one subject comments that he didn't enjoy Agnès's moments of reflection and self-examination, such as close-ups on her aging hands. Back in the early '00s, I was on this guy's side. I didn't understand the detour into what just seemed like home video footage of someone taking shots of themself with their new camera. Now, in the context of this box set, those moments play poignantly and further illustrate Agnès's multi-track mind.

As I said, both of these films originated on standard definition digital video, but they've been bumped up to AVC-encoded 1080p 1.33:1 presentations. Obviously there's a limit to how great these will look, but as with Criterion's recent Bamboozled Blu-ray, it looks like some effort has been made to pull more out of the image and polish it up. Two Years Later might even look a little bit better than the first film, but this might also have to do with the equipment used. The first film is presented in French LPCM 2.0 stereo, while the second is French LPCM mono. Both films have optional English subtitles. Because of the off-the-cuff nature of the filming, some of the sound is less-than-perfect, but in general, both films are well mixed and sound good in these lossless presentations.

Disc 12 Special Features:

• Post-Filmum to The Gleaners and I (HD upscale, 0:43) - A short postscript.


• The Gleaners Museum (HD upscale, 23:43) - A discussion of various French paintings showing gleaners at work.


• Pre-Filmum to The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (HD upscale, 3:01) - The entire first film in fast-forward, acting as a kind of hyperactive "Previously on..."


• Tribute to Zgougou (HD upscale, 2:09) - A delightful mini-portrait of Agnès's cat and production company mascot.

Despite its simplicity -- or more probably, because of it -- Faces Places is intensely moving. The art fosters connections with all these people they (and we) meet, and it grows a deeper connection between Agnès and JR. Agnès is waylaid in a few moments by poor health and old age, but JR is supportive and compassionate. At one point, Agnès asks to meet JR's grandmother to figure out where gets his disposition from. She remains driven and indomitable throughout.

The disc includes three short films that were previously presented together as CineVardaPhoto. These shorts are also related to photography and explore, to varying degrees, the stories, the context, and the humanity represented by those images. The first chronologically is Salut Les Cubains (Hello, Cubans!), from 1964. This short is made almost entirely of stills shot in post-revolution Cuba, edited and sometimes animated in a style similar to Chris Marker's La Jetée. Agnès admits in her 2007 intro that the film's idealistic and optimistic narration about Cuba under Castro turned out to be short-sighted, but it's still a great collection of photography that has been inventively presented. The 1982 short Ulysse concerns a photo that Agnès shot in the '50s on the beach. In the image is a dead goat who likely fell off a nearby cliff, a naked man looking out to sea, and a naked young boy seated near the man and looking back at the goat. (This image is also referenced in Faces Places because they visit the beach where it was photographed.) Agnès reconnects with her models nearly three decades later and tries to piece together the shared meaning of the image. The final short from 2004, Ydessa, Les Ours, et Etc (Ydessa, The Bears, and Etc), focuses on an exhibit curated by Canadian artist Ydessa Hendeles. It consists of an overwhelming barrage of framed photographs from the early 20th Century of people with teddy bears. Agnès highlights several dozen of these photographs, unpacking different visual and historical themes, including World War II and the Holocaust. She also goes to Toronto to interview Ydessa Hendeles to discuss her work.

Faces Places just had a Blu-ray release two years ago, and it seems like an easy deduction that the AVC-encoded 1080p 1.85:1 presentation we have here comes from the same source. It still looks great, like you would hope an essentially new movie would. The soundtrack for Faces Places is French DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround (with optional English subtitles). The score by Matthieu Chedid gets some good play in the surround mix. Salut Les Cubains and Ulysse are framed at 1.66:1 and they come with lossy French Dolby mono audio mixes (both with optional English subtitles). They look great and sound just fine. Ydessa is framed at 1.37:1 and looks like an upscale from SD; the soundtrack is a lossy French and English Dolby stereo mix. No subtitles for the instances of English dialogue, the French is accompanied by a mix of optional and forced English subtitles.

Disc 13 Special Features:

• Chance Is the Best Assistant: Agnès Varda and JR on Faces Places (HD, 46:39) - A wonderful, lively English-language interview with Agnès and JR for the Cohen Film Collection release of Faces Places.


• The Beach Cabin (HD, 4:03) - An outtake from Faces Places, where they paste the photograph Ulysse on a small cabin close to where the image was captured.


• A Visit with Matthieu Chedid (HD, 3:41) - The composer for Faces Places visits Agnès in her courtyard along with JR.


• Faces Places Trailer


• Intros to Salut Les Cubains, Ulysse, and Ydessa, Les Ours, et Etc (HD upscale, 5:01 total) - From 2007.


• One Minute for One Image (HD upscale, 26:43) - A collection of brief segments for French TV in which Agnès offers commentary on a handful of wildly different photographs for roughly a minute apiece.

Technically, Agnès De Ci De Là Varda looks like it was shot on a variety of digital cameras of varying quality, including Agnès's trusty DV camcorder. Overall, the AVC-encoded 1080p 1.78:1 presentation is pretty stable and consistent with just some inborn limitations of the format. The audio is lossy multilingual Dolby 5.1 surround, with optional English subtitles. No complaints. Again, the instances of spoken English are not subtitled.

No special features on Disc 14.

Technically, Beaches comes in an AVC-encoded 1080p 1.85:1 presentation which appears to be sourced from another mix of digital cameras of differing quality. There are many film clips, but these are all sourced from older SD video copies (rather than "punching in" with more recent restored clips of the films). It also features a DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround mix that sounds good, but is heavy on narration in the front channels like most of these late-career docs.

Disc 15 Special Features:

• Quelques Veuves de Noirmoutier (HD upscale, 1:12:07) - A collection of images and stories from Agnès's art installation, The Widows of Noirmoutier. A melancholy and moving exploration of loss and grief.


• Installations (HD upscale, 1:07:29) - A guided tour through Agnès's art installations of the past decade-plus. Much of this material also appears in the Varda by Agnès documentary, but some of it is unique.


• On Trapeze Artists and Acrobatics (HD, 9:45) - A fun behind-the-scenes piece, which looks at the set-up of a sequence with trapeze artists at the beach. This is accompanied by footage of the film's production manager talking about the "acrobatics" of raising money for the film while hanging upside down in a gym.


• Daguerre Beach (HD, 9:22) - Another fun piece that involves the creation of a "beach" on Rue Daguerre outside Agnès home and office for the film. She also has a discussion with one of her neighbors about the themes of her work.


• In Her Own Image: Kelley Conway on Agnès (HD, 15:14) - Professor Conway talks about the way Agnès portrays herself onscreen throughout her career and especially in The Beaches of Agnès.


• Trailer

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda box set is also packaged with a generous 200-page paperback book that includes an introduction by Amy Taubin, stills, program notes by Michael Koresky, notes on the bonus features, the usual technical info, and essays by Ginette Vincendeau, So Mayer, Alexandra Hidalgo, and Rebecca Bengal.

Final Thoughts: Agnès Varda invested all of her films with a restless energy, the spirit of curiosity, and an uncompromising idiosyncrasy. Her early films challenge the norms of fiction and nonfiction filmmaking by picking and choosing elements from both modes and combining them in unexpected ways. Her more recent self-portraits and self-reflexive films are an even better showcase for Agnès's passionate and compassionate soul. When viewers see the films of Agnès Varda, they feel like they know her and wish they could have met her in person. She's inspiring as an artist -- and as a human. This beautifully presented and richly supplemented collection of Agnès Varda's complete cinematic work is an unparalleled triumph. DVD Talk Collector Series.

Justin Remer is a frequent wearer of beards. His new album of experimental ambient music, Joyce, is available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple, and wherever else fine music is enjoyed. He directed a folk-rock documentary called Making Lovers & Dollars, which is now streaming. He also can found be found online reading short stories and rambling about pop music.