Lost in Criterion

Over the years it's become rather apparent that a lot of folks do not appreciate our opinions on Godard. Like Fellini we will not let our awareness of the issue lead us to change.

We finish off the Agnès Varda boxset with a talk on the short films packaged as bonus features: L'opéra-mouffe (1958), Du côté de la côte (1958), and the short narrative film contained within Cleo from 5 to 7, Les fiancés du pont Mac Donald.

We couldn't be happier than to have guest Adam Spieckermann bring his insight to our discussion of Agnès Varda's Le Bonheur, a brightly colored relationship horror film.

We start the 4 by Agnès Varda boxset in medias res, or at the beginning after seeing the middle? This week we’re talking about La Pointe Courte, Varda’s first film but the third in the boxset. Why not talk about the first two? Because we have. This boxset contains two films, Vagabond and Cleo from 5 to 7, which we watched in much earlier episodes of Lost in Criterion in the times we don’t talk about except in apologetic tones of shame.

Some of the best tragedy narratives indict a whole society for creating the system and the path that keep the tragic character imprisoned in his journey toward loss. There's a bit of that in This Sporting Life but the tragedy is focused on the main character's inability to court the woman he can't stop harassing, herself an even starker victim of the local political and economic system.