Oh what a loss the Agnès Varda is. And how how poignant it feels to go all the way back to 1955, and her very first feature film, La Pointe Courte. The 400 Blows, sure, Breathless, also great, yet the enigmatic La Pointe Courte is a talismanic motion picture if we are going to attribute cinema influences on the French New Wave.
Philippe Noiret and Silvia Monfort are a married couple in the midst of some adult turmoil. Varda’s film tackles a kind of raw humanity that even by today’s standards might be an eye-opener. And on a shoestring budget too. Reading, Writing, Arithmetic returns to push you into this brand new movie era.
Recommended Links
The Anti-Romance of Agnès Varda’s ‘La Pointe Courte’ – Erica Peplin (Vague Visages)
Living for Cinema, and Through It – A.O. Scott (The New York Times)
The Wild Palms in a New Wave: Adaptive Gleaning and the Birth of the Nouvelle Vague – Lauren Du Graf
La Pointe Courte: How Agnès Varda “Invented” the New Wave – Ginette Vincendeau (Criterion)
La Pointe-Courte – Ed Howard (Only the Cinema)
Between Neo-Realism and Formalism: Agnès Varda’s La Pointe Courte – Laura Ivins (Indiana University)
