The Complete Podcast

Varda completed her trilogy of tributes to her husband with the most straightforward of the three: a documentary covering Demy’s career and his impact on cinema. As expected, however, Varda at her most straightforward is still a little off-kilter, so there are as many pleasurable detours as there are dry facts and clips in this loving documentary. We discuss the film’s balance of Varda and Demy and close out this miniseries with some thoughts on the couple and Varda’s relationship with her husband’s art.

On this episode, we cover an unusual entry in the Complete catalog: not just a bonus feature, but a bonus feature created for someone else’s movie. Varda revisits her husband’s 1967 film The Young Girls of Rochefort on the 25th anniversary of the film’s release, returning to the seaside town where it was filmed for a celebration of the masterpiece that took over its streets in the 1960s. We discuss both this tribute film and Demy’s work that inspired it, covering the confectionary joy of the original and Varda’s unique perspective and style lent to her husband’s legacy.

Created in the final months of husband Jacques Demy’s life, Varda’s fourteenth feature is one of her most emotionally resonant and visually sumptuous works. On this episode, Matt and Travis discuss the film’s multi-faceted structure as a fictional recreation of Demy’s childhood, a documentary portrait of Demy as an aging and sick adult, and a visual essay on the ways in which Demy’s childhood directly informed his work as one of the most aesthetically dynamic French filmmakers of his generation.

On the thirteenth episode, Matt and Travis tackle the second half of Varda’s diptych with Jane Birkin. After taking a look at our own unease with the subject matter of this controversial fictional film based on a short story Birkin wrote, we discuss the film’s other themes such as the AIDS epidemic, growing older, and 1980s video games.

On the twelfth episode, Matt and Travis welcome longtime Friend of the Show Ericca Long back to discuss Varda’s idiosyncratic portrait of actress, model and icon Jane Birkin. Along with many tangential topics including modern arcades, getting older, and the musical genius of Steely Dan, we discuss the film’s unique blurring of document and fiction and Varda’s insightful use of the many tools at her disposal to present a multifaceted presentation of someone her audience likely believed they already knew everything about.

On the eleventh episode, Matt and Travis welcome Alex Kittle to discuss Vagabond, one of Varda’s most successful and praised films. Alex is a projectionist at the Brattle Theater, one of the greatest and most important repertory theaters in America, in Cambridge, MA. She’s also an accomplished artist as Pan and Scan on Etsy, Ko-Fi, and Behance among other places, with a focus on film and other pop-culture related content. On the episode, we discuss Varda’s empathic portrayal of a woman who has intentionally placed herself on the margins of society and the way this portrait challenges our own personal relationship to the basic social contract we’ve constructed.

On the tenth episode, Matt and Travis discuss Documenteur, Varda’s fictional feature pairing with her documentary Mur Murs. A self-described “emotion picture,” Varda’s final film in Hollywood is semi-autobiographical. We discuss the movie’s unique tone merging melancholy and playful meta touches that nod both to Mur Murs and the nature of filmmaking in general, along with the personal and compelling portrayal of a woman’s interiority that makes this one of the more underrated films in her catalog. We also discuss a wide range of shorts Varda made in the period after Documenteur and before her next landmark film.

On the ninth episode, Matt and Travis discuss Varda’s documentary on the murals of Los Angeles, Mur Murs. Created virtually simultaneously with the fictional film Documenteur,  Mur Murs is a portrait of Los Angeles as a concrete landscape dotted with organic beauty from unusual origins. We discuss the film’s depiction of this much misunderstood city and in particular its marginalized communities that get to shine here, along with Varda’s evolving relationship with the documentary form she has developed throughout her career.

On the eighth episode, Matt and Travis welcome Laura Cannon from the Fatal Femmes podcast to discuss Varda’s self-described “feminist musical,” One Sings, the Other Doesn’t. We discuss the film’s still-relevant issues confronting women, the unique nature of the friendship depicted in the film, and the film’s powerful emotional impact.

On the seventh episode of The Complete Varda, Matt and Travis discuss the charming documentary Varda made for German television in 1975, Daguerréotypes. A simple profile of the shops and their keepers on the block in Paris where Varda lived until the end of her life, the film also served as a challenge for Varda, who restricted herself to a 200 foot range around her flat in order to stay close to her young son. We discuss this clever juxtaposition of filmic text and performance piece outside of the work, along with the political implications of the film; but we also bask in the glow of a neighborhood’s charm that typified a bygone era even at the time of its filming.