Jane B. par Agnès V.

JANE B. PAR AGNES V.   ***

Agnès Varda

1988

IDEA: An innovative biopic of actress and singer Jane Birkin.

BLURB:  Cinema is not only a mirror of the reality in front of a camera, but of the subjectivity of the person behind it. This notion, so central to Varda’s documentary and docu-fictional works, expands in Jane B. par Agnès V. to explicitly include multiple subjects. Here, that’s the triangulated relationship between filmmaker, camera, and filmed subject, in which all parts of the equation are equalized. Varda rejects hierarchical relations: while Birkin is the ostensible object and “muse” of this biopic, she is not positioned to be captured and controlled by the omnipotent Auteur. Instead, Varda establishes a generous, reciprocal interchange with the British-French actress and singer, in which the women are reflected in and by each other, and form a synthesis that transcends codified roles. The result is a most unusual biopic, a dual portrait of two women framed in creative chiasmus, as people who come to their identities through the art they produce. Varda’s preoccupations – time, artistic representation, class, gender, mortality – all emerge through her freewheeling, sometimes desultory-to-a-fault vignettes, but attain another dimension in how they intersect with Birkin’s slippery persona. Jane B. par Agnès V. is an embodiment of the vitality and necessity of this and other collaborations, and most affectingly, a love letter exchanged between creative confidantes.