Directed by Agnès Varda • 1988 • France
Starring Jane Birkin, Mathieu Demy, Charlotte Gainsbourg
Made concurrently with Agnès Varda’s portrait of Jane Birkin, JANE B. PAR AGNÈS V., KUNG-FU MASTER! is a true family affair, achieving a sense of of lived-in intimacy by casting the actor’s real-life relatives, including daughters Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon, as themselves. Varda and Birkin give the familiar theme of a misunderstood couple searching for a place where their love can survive a provocative twist in this daring romance, in which Birkin (who wrote the story that provided the inspiration for the film) plays a middle-aged woman involved with a fourteen-year-old, video game–obsessed boy (Varda’s son, Mathieu Demy). The taboo relationship plays out with supreme delicacy and restraint, as Varda transforms the explosive premise into a disarmingly tender portrait of a woman’s search for lost youth.
Up Next in Part 1: The Films
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Jane B. par Agnès V.
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1988 • France
Starring Jane Birkin, Agnès Varda, Charlotte GainsbourgThe interests, obsessions, and fantasies of two singular artists converge in this inspired collaboration between Agnès Varda and her longtime friend the actor Jane Birkin. Made over the course of a ye...
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Jacquot de Nantes
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1991 • France
Starring Philippe Maron, Édouard Joubeaud, Laurent MonnierAgnès Varda’s tender evocation of the childhood of her husband, Jacques Demy—a dream project that she realized for him when he became too ill to direct it himself—is a wonder-filled portrait of the...
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The Young Girls Turn 25
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1993 • France
For this documentary about the making of THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT, filmmaker Agnès Varda, director Jacques Demy’s widow, returned to the town of Rochefort for the film’s twenty-fifth anniversary. In it, she interviews actors Catherine Deneuve, Jacque...
