Agnès Varda

Jane B. par Agnès V.

Jane B. par Agnès V.

The 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 year and motivated by Birkin’s fortieth birthday—a milestone she admits to some anxiety over—Jane B. par Agnès V. contrasts the private, reflective Birkin with Birkin the icon, as Varda casts her variously as a classical muse, a femme fatale, a Spanish dancer, Joan of Arc, and even a deadpan Laurel opposite a clownish Hardy in a fanciful slapstick spoof. Made in the spirit of pure, uninhibited play, this free-flowing dual portrait unfolds as a shared reverie between two women as they collapse the boundaries between artist and subject.

Share

Film Info

  • France
  • 1988
  • 98 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.66:1
  • French

Available In

Collector's Set

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

The Complete Films of Agnès Varda

Blu-ray Box Set

15 Discs

$199.96

Jane B. par Agnès V.
Cast
Jane Birkin
Assorted characters
Philippe Léotard
Painter/murderer
Jean-Pierre Léaud
Angry lover
Serge Gainsbourg
Himself
Charlotte Gainsbourg
Herself
Alain Souchon
Reader of Verlaine
Laura Betti
Lardy
Farid Chopel
Colonialist
Mathieu Demy
Himself
Credits
Director
Agnès Varda
Written by
Agnès Varda
Cinematography by
Nurith Aviv
Cinematography by
Pierre-Laurent Chénieux
Sound
Olivier Schwob
Sound
Jean-Paul Mugel
Sound
Alix Comte
Edited by
Agnès Varda
Edited by
Marie-Josée Audiard
Set design by
Bertrand Lheminier
Set design by
Philippe Bernard
Set design by
Olivier Radot
Costumes by
Rosalie Varda
Costumes by
Rose-Marie Melka

Related Films

1/4
2/4
3/4
4/4

Explore

Agnès Varda

Writer, Director

Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda

The only female director of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda has been called both the movement’s mother and its grandmother. The fact that some have felt the need to assign her a specifically feminine role, and the confusion over how to characterize that role, speak to just how unique her place in this hallowed cinematic movement—defined by such decidedly masculine artists as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut—is. Varda not only made films during the nouvelle vague, she helped inspire it. Her self-funded debut, the fiction-documentary hybrid 1956’s La Pointe Courte is often considered the unofficial first New Wave film; when she made it, she had no professional cinema training (her early work included painting, sculpting, and photojournalism). Though not widely seen, the film got her commissions to make several documentaries in the late fifties. In 1962, she released the seminal nouvelle vague film Cléo from 5 to 7; a bold character study that avoids psychologizing, it announced her official arrival. Over the coming decades, Varda became a force in art cinema, conceiving many of her films as political and feminist statements, and using a radical objectivity to create her unforgettable characters. She describes her style as cinécriture (writing on film), and it can be seen in formally audacious fictions like Le bonheur and Vagabond as well as more ragged and revealing autobiographical documentaries like The Gleaners and I and The Beaches of Agnès.

More Agnès Varda