Jane B. for Agnes V.

1988 biographical portrait

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A look at the singer/actress Jane Birkin.

This is the kind of biographical portrait that only Agnes Varda could assemble. Interview chunks, slice-of-life glimpses of the actress in her home or with her family, fantasy sequences, art tableau, and even Laurel and Hardy impressions create a mosaic that doesn't give you much factual information about Jane Birkin's life or career but succeeds in creating her as a human being and helps you understand her personality. The latter, as well as Varda's style in presenting this woman, is charming. At one point, one of them (Varda, who appears in this a handful of times, or Birkin) says, "We agreed the film would wander." Wander it does, in that typical way that Varda's documentaries tend to wander. As a documentary filmmaker, she's less interested in justifying beliefs she has or sharing her ideas with the world. Instead, she's interested in exploration to get a better understanding of how people and places function or even a better understanding of herself. Here, she explores Jane Birkin in ways that are just lovely. And no, I'm not talking about scenes in which Birkin appears on screen sans clothing.

Speaking of that, there are a few surrealistic touches in some of these fantasy sequences, as well as some references to Dali and Magritte and these wonderful paintings I couldn't identify that were on the walls during a roulette wheel scene. My favorite scene shows that roulette wheel a second time, this time with the gamblers all nude and with a pair of naked guys on stilts for some reason.

Nipples on statues, a gloriously hopeless belly dance ("You're as sexy as a locust to them."), a wonderful use of a metronome, an eruption of flies on Venus, a story about puking carrots, a slow pan along the curves of a naked body. There's a lot to love about this one.

Oh, this directly references Kung Fu Master!, and it likely even helps clear up some of the themes of that movie.