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inema is my home,â€? says Agnes Varda, icon of the French New Wave, director of Cleo from 5 to 7 (her 1962 breakout ďŹ lm), One Sings, the Other Doesn’t and many other ďŹ lms, some rarely seen in the United States. In 2008, at nearly 80, Varda made the autobiographical ďŹ lm The Beaches of Agnes. The ďŹ lm is anything but cut-anddried chronology. Varda mixes footage from her ďŹ lms with old family photos and About the only thing Agnes Varda can’t direct—the sea. home movies, reenactments of episodes in With her Dutch-boy haircut—the same her past, and her present-day life. She sails a boat up the Seine, visits the southern as it’s been for decades, but now dyed a color French town of Sete, where her family lived verging on purple—Varda is a roly-poly, aging pixie, full of energy and on a boat after escaping not a bit sentimental. She German-occupied Brussels, loves the ocean, and she also goes back to Hollywood COMING SOON loves the courtyard outside where she became enchantThe Beaches of Agnes her Paris home, where some ed with the Black Panthers. opens Friday at the Lark. of the ďŹ lm’s most enchantSee page 27 for showtimes. Digression is the name of ing scenes are shot. Varda’s game. Sometimes A caveat: Beaches of Agnes the ďŹ lm becomes self-inis for people who know and love ďŹ lm, or dulgent, but it’s never dull. Varda was in the forefront of the New who love ďŹ lm and would like to know more. Wave, whose male directors—Resnais, O O O O Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, etc.—tend to If you’re not out trick-or-treating on be better remembered. Varda worked with or knew everyone from Gerard Depardieu Halloween, you can get your share of to Alexander Calder to Harrison Ford. Her sweets at the Italian Film Festival’s screenpolitical activism has included champion- ing (at 5:30 and 7:45pm) of the prize-wining tolerance and women’s causes. And she ning comedy Lessons in Chocolate, at the married the decidedly non-New Wave di- Marin Center Showcase Theatre. A special rector Jacques Demy, creator of the magical guest will be Alba Calia, vice president of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. (A surprising RAI, the state-owned Italian Public Broadrevelation in The Beaches of Agnes: Demy’s casting Service. Review our reviews at letters@paciďŹ csun.com. death at 59 was caused by AIDS.)
Woody Allen wrote WHATEVER WORKS for Zero Mostel at the height of his powers in the Annie Hall ‘70s, and we owe the film’s modern incarnation to the director’s fear of a SAG strike last year—that, and to Mostel’s untimely death in 1977. Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry David steps bravely into the great comic’s shoes and aside from a thrown-in reference to Obama, it’s pretty much the fascinating time capsule it should be. David plays ex-quantum mechanic Boris Yellnikoff, a wracked pessimist who’s become a recluse in lower-Manhattan’s Chinatown, dealing misanthropic truth-doses to any and all who’ll listen. When a waifish Mississippi belle turns up at his doorstep hungry and desperate, Boris takes her in on a strictly temporary basis—until a day-trip to Grant’s Tomb together hints at something more. David’s ranting Yellnikoff has all the emotional range of a tuning fork, which is kind of the point: As he warns us through the fourth wall early on,“This is not the feel-good movie of the year...so if you’re one of those idiots who needs to feel good, go get yourself a foot massage.�—Richard Gould