Documenteur (1981) was filmed by French director Agnes Varda in Los Angeles while she was separated from husband Jacques Demy and it is subtitled “An Emotion Picture”. Like some of Varda’s other work, it mixes together fiction and reality, employing a documentary approach towards constructed elements that are no doubt reflecting what she was going through and what was around her; as a result, the film does feel like an expression of both a situation and an emotion. We basically follow a divorced French woman, Emilie (Sabine Mamou, who has worked as an editor on Varda’s films) with her young son, Martin (Martin Demy, Agnes’ actual son) as they find a new residence in Los Angeles. Working as a typist for an absent actress (vocal cameo by Delphine Seyrig), Emilie looks out at the beach and how it is shaped by the people walking by, picking up rubbish or the tractors smoothing out the sand. There’s a downbeat air to the grey skies and dejected faces of the people hanging around the docks and inside cafes and across the coastal apartment blocks. Observational with narrated insights initially from Varda and then from this fictional analogue in Mamou’s performance, I responded to Documenteur’s patient and sensitive tones. Mamou has such a great face and portrays both the sadness of a separation, love for their attached child, and their ruminations for physical contact and sensuality (often depicted in sex scenes that are either memories or imagined longing). Like Varda’s other films, the camera is open and welcoming to people on the street, real bodies and real faces, and a sense of time and place coloured with the director’s situation, a way to document and express it through the art of film. It’s also only 65 minutes as well and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Available to watch on Mubi streaming and released by Criterion Collection in various Varda related collections. Recommended.
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