Monday, January 6, 2014

La Pointe Courte (1955)

Janus Films
Directed by Agnes Varda
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Turner Classic Movies)

A Parisian couple meet in a rural fishing village, his birthplace, to discuss their disintegrating relationship. The locals dodge government officials trying to stop their illegal fishing activity. They live in abject poverty with a very large cat population. A sickness strikes down one of the children of the village, but hardly anyone notices. Later, the Parisians attend a festival where the fisherman joust on top of elaborately decorated boats. The juxtaposition of the boring conversations between the couple and the far more interesting daily lives of the villagers is unclear; as one of them notes, "they talk too much to be happy". The first-time director, a still photographer, occasionally poses the actors in artistic positions, but it only calls attention to itself. The amateurs of the village can't resist occasional glances at the camera. There is one drowned cat and talk about drowning kittens.

No comments:

Post a Comment