Audio transcription
For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.
Vagabond and Kung Fu Master introduction and post-screening discussion with Haden Guest and Agnès Varda. Monday March 16, 2009.
0:03 HADEN GUEST
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Harvard Film Archive. My name is Haden Guest and I'm the director, and I'm feeling quite sad that this is the last evening in our Agnès Varda retrospective. This retrospective—dedicated to the work of one of the most indefatigable, irrepressible forces in French cinema today.
Agnès Varda, of course, began in 1954 with the extraordinary La Pointe Courte, a film that prefigured and anticipated the New Wave and many, many other things, and continues to this day to be producing extraordinary films. Agnès will be joining us after this screening of Vagabond, and then she'll also be speaking about the second film tonight in this double feature with Kung Fu Master.
Vagabond, from 1985, is one of Varda’s hardest-hitting, and most critically acclaimed films. It was a return to a narrative form, though in her own particular way. I mean, Varda’s best work Vagabond famously combined documentary and narrative film conventions and really challenges these traditional categories. The film's grounded in an extraordinary performance by Sandrine Bonnaire—the celebrated French actress who was only 17 and a half years old when she appeared in this film, for which she won a César, France’s equivalent of the Oscar.
I want to tell you a little bit about the rest of our program here—we've got some extraordinary programs coming up. I want to give special mention though to the next major retrospective, which we're really proud to present. This is the first U.S. retrospective of Kiju Yoshida. Yoshida is one of the preeminent directors of the Japanese New Wave, as important as Oshima, Imamura and all of the Shochiku directors. He began at Shochiku, worked with Oshima, and he's probably best known for his work with the famous actress, Mariko Okada, who is his wife and they've made 12 films together. We're going to be showing almost all of them. Mariko Okada is a true legend of the post-war Japanese cinema. She was in Ozu’s last two films, she was in Naruse’s Floating Clouds and many other major works of post-war Japanese cinema. We’re gonna be having a special evening dedicated to Ozu. Kiju Yoshida also knew Ozu. He knew him at Shochiku where he apprenticed briefly with him. And he returned to the subject of Ozu who had always interested him and wrote a major, and really fascinating book about the great master, and a documentary. We're going to be showing that documentary in its U.S. premiere, together with a late Ozu film that stars Mariko Okada. And so we're going to be talking about Ozu and getting a real intimate look at Ozu’s films that we know and love so well. So this is an extraordinary series that’s happening. We’re very, very excited, and I hope you'll take a moment to look through our calendar. We've got many other great visitors, Ramin Bahrani, one of the more interesting, I think, and important young American directors working in independent cinema today. And many, many others including James Benning, and I could go on and on, but I won’t. I
just want to thank our friends at the French Consulate here in Boston: Brigitte Bouvier, Eric Jausseran, and the Consul General himself Francois Gauthier. I also want to thank the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, who was instrumental in making Ms. Varda’s visit possible. On the third floor of this building in the Sert Gallery, there is an installation by Agnès Varda, Les Veuves de Noirmoutier. This is the first installation piece of Varda’s in the U.S. Agnès Varda has reinvented herself as an installation artist. Actually, there are clues to this in her films. I mean, her films, I think, leading up to her entry into the gallery world—into the museum world, are filled with these marvelous and dreamy set pieces. And this one is one of her best, so I encourage you to go upstairs and see Les Veuves de Noirmoutier, which is up until mid-April. I’m gonna ask you, please, to turn off all cell phones, all electronic devices, refrain from rustling in any plastic or paper bags ‘cause it annoys everybody. And I want to thank you all for coming. And we're gonna have, probably, a 10-minute intermission between the films. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
5:25 DAVID PENDLETON
Please welcome Agnès Varda.
[APPLAUSE]
5:42 AGNÈS VARDA
Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you.
5:53 AGNÈS VARDA
So. Are we supposed to speak a little bit about the film, or are there questions or—? [INAUDIBLE]
5:58 DAVID PENDLETON
[INAUDIBLE] —talk a little bit about the background?
6:00 AGNÈS VARDA
Is that film questioning you?
[LAUGHTER]
6:04 DAVID PENDLETON
And it has—somebody has a specific question? Yes, one, at the bottom.
6:11 DAVID PENDLETON
Hang on, wait for the audience mics to get to you. The person—you’re talking about the person in the back there, Agnès, or—?
6:15 AGNÈS VARDA
Somebody raised their hand. I don’t know.
6:18 DAVID PENDLETON
Yeah, someone in the back there. I thought, if not, we'll bring it down here. Because there's definitely somebody with a question.
6:28 AGNÈS VARDA
[UNKNOWN] —oh, so many hands.
6:31 AUDIENCE
Can you hear this? Okay. I'm not sure I was the one who raised my hand. But I've seen this film many, many times. And I love this film. This time around, what I noticed—I noticed the colors, the color red, the blue doors, the—
6:46 AGNÈS VARDA
[?Je ne comprends pas?] [UNKNOWN]
6:48 AUDIENCE
Entende?
6:49 AGNÈS VARDA
No.
6:49 AUDIENCE
Oh, I'll—okay—I’ll say it again.
6:52 AGNÈS VARDA
You saw the film many times. I'm delighted, and then what?
6:55 AUDIENCE
This time I'm really noticing the use of color—les couleurs—the red door, the red scarf, the blue doors, the van Gogh painting in the reproduction. And I'm just wondering about the—it's a beautiful film, you know—visuellement—visually, and I'm appreciating this, you know, even more like the 10th time that I've seen it. Could you talk a little bit about that—the composition and the two trees, you know, that you start and end with, that—where Mona dies—those two big trees that you start with? Can you just talk a little bit about la composition [?des plantes?].
7:45 AGNÈS VARDA
So, you know these two trees exist. And I noticed them many times when I go to Montpellier. It’s like a little mountain and the two trees. Later, I was told that when they did the freeway, they had to move the earth but they had to keep this because it was a sign for the plane pilots. So, it's very strange and, for me, it looks like a funeral place—like a cemetery in the two trees. So I always thought that we should find her there and she should die there. This is for the visual of these two trees that intrigued me and I was impressed. Now, about the colors, I really, really tried and kept that intention to have a minimum of color—a minimum, minimum. And so, you know, we started to shoot in February, maybe January, February, March, and the spring was starting to come. And sometimes for the shots we were like, you know, salvage, we got all the flowers that appearing, whatever would appear and be nice, we took it out to keep the winter and the darkness of the landscape. And in the 13 tracking shots going from right to left, it's always this kind of landscape. Very sad, very down, like the one with the—comment dites [UNKNOWN] —tie?
9:24 DAVID PENDLETON
Tie?
9:25 AGNÈS VARDA
Ties—and then fences and then—so it is intentional to keep the film low, cold colors—and to exaggerate in a way the cold that we really see when she dies. Have you seen—just came in at the last minute. It was really cold—you know, you can see the foam coming out of her mouth. And each time I see that I'm always impressed by the way she fell. I said you know, you have to fall but like, I remember each time it kept my respiration when the violence with how she acted that. Pow! Incredible young woman, she was not even 18—we did her birthday 18 on the shooting. I was impressed by her vigor, her violence, which fits very well with the character. And, she has changed a lot. She has become a beautiful woman. And she does, you know, roles in which she is smiling all the time. She looks beautiful, she's seen, she's et cetera. But at that time, she was like a violent person. I think I was lucky to meet her and to have her be the film because she's really part of the film, very strongly.
10:41 DAVID PENDLETON
Had you seen Sandrine Bonnaire in À Nos Amours, the Pialat film, before this?
10:45 AGNÈS VARDA
Sure, sure, I had seen her. Pialat discovered her—she was like three years before—15 years and a half. And in À Nos Amours, she's incredible, really. Very young, very incredible.
10:59 DAVID PENDLETON
Are there other questions?
11:00 AGNÈS VARDA
I've seen hands everywhere.
11:02 DAVID PENDLETON
All right. And then this guy.
11:03 AUDIENCE
I had two questions. The first one was—this was the first time I'd seen the film. And the character of Mona reminded me of one or two people I've known—and have you known people like Mona, who you based the character around?
11:17 AGNÈS VARDA
Absolutely. How could I totally invent it? You know, when I started to remarquer, to—
11:25 DAVID PENDLETON
To notice?
11:26 AGNÈS VARDA
—to note that there were not only young men on the road, but young women, which was a recent thing, you know. I would go drive and you know, stop on the road, take them in my car, have them speak sometimes. Once I remember I took one, I say okay, let's go and go in the restaurant. We enter in a restaurant, they say “No, no, we don't want you because you look so dirty,” I mean, the girl. And I understood the problem of being dirty is something that society refuses to [?sully?]. They could say no, I heard things like, “He's poor but he's clean.” And the thing about being dirty is unbearable for people, and, you know that here in America it's even worse, I mean the [UNKNOWN] Durant civilization is all over.
[LAUGHTER]
12:15 AGNÈS VARDA
And, so, I think it was a subject that they don't care—what I found out speaking with them a lot. Staying at night in the station when they don’t close the station because it's winter. Don't you have like five, six people sleeping in the waiting room in the station? So I would stay, and they wonder what I'm doing there, but after a while, you know, they come to me, they say “what you do?” So I had them speak a lot. I investigated a lot before starting. And one of the girls—young girls I met—I learned so much from her that she like, she told me—and I kept that in the film—that she don't want men you know, to be around her and so she would sleep near the cemetery because nobody would believe that a girl would sleep near a cemetery wall. And things like these little details that I heard about them, I noticed that they have no logical– This is not camping, you know. They never have a classical knife for camping. They have stupid things. Once, I took one in my car and said, “what do you have in your bag?” “Oh, I have a dictionary, French dictionary.” “Why?” “Well I found it.” So the only thing she had besides you know, a knife and sweaters, was a dictionnaire. So there is something about them. I said them in générale, that slightly on the border, slightly, and sometimes very much on the border because it is so strange to have these people on roads like this with nothing. So they meet in some shelter—is like shelter sometimes or somewhere. They give them soup. But they are very, very lonely and decided to be lonely and decided to be wild and to– it’s a choice even though sometimes maybe they would like something different. They don’t, you know. I would say they don't have shoes like shoes that even you could find, shoes in flea markets—you could find shoes, solid shoes. They have stupid shoes, like normal shoes to go in a town. There is nothing logical in their behavior. I was impressed by that. And obviously before making the film, I spent at least two months, I would say, investigating, meeting, trying to find—especially behavior and way of holding the situation of where they go, you know, where they go to have soup, where they go to—so, and then it's a fiction. It's a real fiction, but I kept many things I had discovered by my little inquiries.
15:01 AUDIENCE
Thank you. The second question I had was—I noticed the love of wordplay of Mona and and even in the credits at the end, and it reminded me of a couple of lines in Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, where the Catherine Deneuve character says that her ideal man would love wordplay. And I was wondering—
15:22 AGNÈS VARDA
The ideal man would be what?
15:25 AUDIENCE
The ideal man would be somebody who loves wordplay—les calembours.
15:29 AGNÈS VARDA
Ah, les calembours.
15:30 AUDIENCE
[UNKNOWN] —et cetera.
15:31 AGNÈS VARDA
Le jeu de mots.
15:32 AUDIENCE
Le jeu de mots, oui. And I was wondering—when Jacques Demy was still alive, is that something that you and he enjoyed a lot?
15:42 AGNÈS VARDA
Yeah, absolutely. We shared it a lot. And including somewhat [UNKNOWN] not always very good taste—what we call [?contrepèterie?]. Something you can switch it and it's a stupid sexual joke, but—and sometimes we liked that and also the thing that I use to explain the way I set up Les Plages d’Agnès, something which is— [UNKNOWN] —you know, something that exists, that all children know, and this is to—words are something nice to play with.
16:22 AUDIENCE
Thank you.
16:23 AUDIENCE
I know that this was made in the 1980s, however, France has had that tradition of L’Abbé Pierre?
16:33 AGNÈS VARDA
Ah?
16:34 AUDIENCE
France has had the tradition of the Father Pierre—L’Abbé Pierre?
16:39 AGNÈS VARDA
L’Abbé Pierre?
16:40 AUDIENCE
Yes, the Catholic workers—the Catholic priests—who somehow went to live the life of the abandoned people—the workers—they went into factories. And then somehow your movie looks a little bit religious, almost with a sense of so many people—they were full of regrets. This girl appears in their lives, and she was a little bit like a flash—like lightning. And somehow, they wish they had done something but the girl was already dead. Was there some sort of almost a sense that we could be helping our fellow human beings and don't do anything, but we're always full of regrets?
17:29 AGNÈS VARDA
Many things in your question. L’Abbé Pierre is a man—a priest who started something really to help people. And he had disappeared, bizarrely enough, for many years, and he came back the year after my film, and he has been very, very, you know, efficient fighting to get shelter to the people and food et cetera, et cetera. When I made the film, bizarrely enough, this is ‘85—‘84, the words—the thing we say in France, “sans domicile fixe,” we call them, “without a fixed address.” And it didn't—it was a police sign. At that time, they were still called clochards and bums and [UNKNOWN]—and it's very odd because this is 25 years after, more or less. And now it's very precise in everybody's mind that some people are outside frozen in the winter. At that time very few people cared about that. And it is true that I could make a story in which something nicer could happen that would save her from the street, from the death, and I didn't want that to happen. That's why it starts with she's dead. There is no hope that the story will be ending better. And I was very impressed because it's like putting herself in a cycle, that she cannot go back. The more she goes, the less she wants to speak to people. That when she accepts even some work, she's difficult, you know, she’s really even with this, you know, that was at the time philosophy teacher dropping university and [making] goat cheese, you know, there was a lot of these people going back to the earth and dropping IDs, et cetera. Even though, by the way, those were real ones that I met and I asked them to play in the film—to act. They were real drop-outs of teaching. And when they meet, one would believe that to revolt, people would meet, find a common field of, you know, be against society and all that, and it doesn't work. It doesn't work because each rebel wants to be the only one revolted. And I noticed that really very much when I was investigating. So, I wrote it down that way, so that when she comes, he said, “Oh, we can give you a trailer, we can give you a field. You can raise potatoes,” potatoes again. And, one would believe that when she said that, “We'd like to do this and that,” she would like—and she makes it—it doesn't work. It doesn't work. She's mean with them. She puts some fire in the trailer. She doesn't want to work. I mean, she's cross, you know, and so it doesn't end good when it could have been a little better if she stayed with these people. So, the more she goes, the less she's agreeable to others. The less she likes other people. She doesn't like anybody. So little by little—lack of dialogue. This is part of, you know, vanishing from the world because she's really alone, and then I set up the circumstances of her losing or slipping back in the fire. And that scene in the station where there is a kind of pimp trying to [give] her some dirty work and she's not even interested. She drinks, she's out of it, you know. Now, one of the things I like to do in the film was to construct different characters that are one point, at one point, at one point.
[LAUGHTER]
At one point, at one point, they meet in the station. They all meet in the station—the maid, the bus of the maid, the one she would film she was in the castle smoking pot. And her—I tried to do something—it was suddenly—make like a nod. And from that, she goes away and from that she goes to her death. Plus that violent scene in the village as I explained. The violence which is not against her, but she perceives very bad. So, it's really, for me, a tragic trip from being just a drop-out to becoming a white person to becoming lonely, unable to speak, unable to share anything, and then cold and frozen. I wanted to push that very—yes?
22:30 AUDIENCE
Credits went by quickly, but I saw one credit for the, le, the “something” juif, and I want to know is it—
22:37 AGNÈS VARDA
Le Juif errant.
22:38 AUDIENCE
Okay, the errant Jew. The wandering Jew.
22:41 AGNÈS VARDA
Is it the book which is well known, The Errant Jewish?
22:45 UNKNOWN SPEAKER
The Wandering Jew.
22:45 AUDIENCE
The Wandering Jew.
22:46 AGNÈS VARDA
Ah, The Wandering Jew.
22:48 AUDIENCE
Is this a stereotype that I'm not...
22:51 AGNÈS VARDA
Is that a what?
22:53 AUDIENCE
Just explain to me—I didn't know watching the movie who that was, and would people in France know in 1985 who that was in the movie? Who was that?
23:02 AGNÈS VARDA
Well, it's the man she meets, and they go together in that castle, you know? And, it could be anything but, the real actor was Jewish. And when he goes away, and he's wounded after the battle, you know, and he said, “She stole my radio, she smoked all my pot and now I'm going.” I put him in one of these train—wagon—comment dites wagon?
23:32 DAVID PENDLETON
Like a boxcar.
23:33 AGNÈS VARDA
Ah?
23:34 AUDIENCE
Boxcar.
23:35 AGNÈS VARDA
And there were some signs in German on the car—on the train, so I had a feeling that it was like a reminder of people going away in these marchandise—it’s not for people you know, you’re not seated.
23:53 DAVID PENDLETON
Like a cattle car, or a wagon—a boxcar.
23:57 AGNÈS VARDA
Yeah, well. So I called him the “Wanderer Jew” just to distinguish from the others—nothing special. He doesn't speak about that really, in the film. Just, I called him like this.
24:10 AUDIENCE
Thank you.
24:15 AUDIENCE
Hi, could you talk a little bit about your decision to have certain characters break that wall and talk directly to us, ‘cause at first it seems like they're being interviewed by the police after she died and they're remembering her, but Yolande is so different than all the rest. She really breaks that wall and talks to us. It's almost very—I don’t know—I'd love you to talk about that, if you have anything to say.
24:39 AGNÈS VARDA
At the end, you said?
24:40 AUDIENCE
How Yolande’s character, when she speaks directly to the audience, or to us, it feels very, very different than all the other testimonies about Mona. She's more in the process of in real time when she's speaking about Mona. It doesn't seem like it's in the past.
24:59 AGNÈS VARDA
Well, I thought that, in a way, the film is trying to draw a portrait of Mona. And that is, in a way—I always said, impossible portrait—but it is made by other people telling what they think about her, what they felt when she came by, what she felt when she stayed there, so we have all these testimonies, as you say, looking at us because I'm questioning. So these people speak to you and saying she did that, and that, I don't know, one says, “I would like to be free, like she is,” another one said, you know, “These girls are all the same.” One says, “Oh, poor little girl,” et cetera. So, it's like building all these opinions about her even though nobody really knows her. Just an impression of what she did when they met her, time is one hour, six hours. So it’s like she doesn’t exist, really, because it's very visual, what they say. That's what I wanted to build with these interviews, sort of, which are totally written and this is not a documentary. And even when I spoke with the mason or the people like this, I made up the line—I’d say, “Would you like to say that, and that?” But I wanted to keep that quality of speaking to you and saying, who was she? Do we know something about her? And in a way, each spectator of the film, I could ask you, what do you know about that girl? What would you say if you see her? Would you take her in a car? Would you just give her money? Would you help her, giving a sandwich, or—? I have the feeling that by having these people look at the audience, they speak to you and then you should answer like, “and what about you? What do you think?” In a way for me, each person in the room is also one of the witnesses that saw Mona.
Now, then, there is another famous line of the French writer Stendhal, says that a character is a mirror walking on the road. And we learn more about the society that she meets, and the people that she meets, than about her—that was the second aspect of it. We know more about the people who hate others [UNKNOWN] —no, people who hate strangers, people who hate different people. People who don't want to accept, people who think these dirty—which the subject of being dirty was part of the film. So, in a way we learn more about that society, that part of France—very narrow-minded. I mean, say, then about her with a kind of—she just passes, you know, and she dies. So she's like, almost not existing, even though I ask her to act very much, physical behavior, you know, her shoes, how she eats, how she puts a sleeping bag—all this was very important for me, because the story is not what she feels, what she—it’s how she behaves, how she can survive. That was the subject.
[INAUDIBLE]
Yes, one more. Because, we’re supposed to introduce [INAUDIBLE]
28:27 AUDIENCE
I just have a quick question—that the men who were dressed like trees in the bathtub with the wine—is there a local custom, or was that just a bunch of crazy guys?
28:38 AGNÈS VARDA
A custom of doing what?
28:39 AUDIENCE
Was that a local custom, dressing like trees? And, and—
28:45 DAVID PENDLETON
The village at the end, where they come in [INAUDIBLE]
28:45 AGNÈS VARDA
Yes, yes, yes.
28:45 AUDIENCE
In the bathtub, with the wine.
28:46 AGNÈS VARDA
Well, it's a custom of that village called Cournonterral, near Montpellier, come from very old age. They do that once a year. And that day, the village is closed because you know... Everybody closes the window, closes everything and protects the windows because they really are monsters and they really throw these things. And it's the wine, you know, phew, whatever, [UNKNOWN] —and they pee in it, you know, it's just disgusting. And they try to catch these white people—throw them in. And when we did the shooting, it was very difficult. We had to redo elsewhere because they almost killed us with... They put Sandrine in the bath, and they put these things around the eyes and nose. I mean, it was very difficult. So we ended the shooting and cleaned ourselves for hours. And then, we had to redo it in another place. Just to say that, it's a very violent thing. It's just, they're allowed to do it from three to six.
And the cities close and there is no law, I mean, like, it's a wild time between three and six—they can do whatever they want. And at six, they have to stop, then the police come back and they open the village again. That's the way it is.
[LAUGHTER]
It happens, some custom—it exists, you know. And I had noticed that, and I use it in the film to bring a metaphoric violence against her even though it's not against her because they don't care about her. But so that it would be so frightening, that's another shock arriving to her and separates her even more than other people. Because she came to get some bread and she ends up frightened, totally frightened, and escaping as much as she can, but villagers don't—she's really hungry and she's frozen.
30:33 DAVID PENDLETON
Okay, I think the next thing that we'll do then is if you don't mind saying a couple of words about Kung Fu Master.
30:40 AGNÈS VARDA
Switch? Pfft, switch?
[LAUGHTER]
My God.
30:42 DAVID PENDLETON
Unless you wanna have—we could have an intermission first if—
30:44 AGNÈS VARDA
No, but, I mean, who wants to stay for Kung Fu Master? So.
30:48 DAVID PENDLETON
I think a lot of people are gonna stay, so if you— [INAUDIBLE]
30:50 AGNÈS VARDA
Those who stay, then I speak to those.
30:52 DAVID PENDLETON
Alright we'll have the intermission now then, and then we'll say a few words about Kung Fu Master.
[LAUGHTER, CHATTER]
30:56 AGNÈS VARDA
You’ll do what now?
30:57 DAVID PENDLETON
We'll have an intermission. And then we’ll— [INAUDIBLE]
30:58 AGNÈS VARDA
Intermission? Oh, oh, oh.
The film I made when I was doing a film—another film, with Jane Birkin called Jane B. by Agnès V. I was trying to make an imaginary portrait and while we were speaking, working, and questioning her, she said, “I've always dreamed to make a film in which I would be a woman in love with a very young adolescent. I had in mind that once in a party, a young boy vomited, and thought I should protect him.” And from that thing, I said, “Okay, let's do it.” So, because I was interested in having the family feeling because she would act, she's acting—Jane Birkin—with her real daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, which by the way became a famous actress now. The other daughter, Lou Doillon, who was three years old in the film, now has become an actress. And I was asking my son, Mathieu who was 14 years, more or less 15, to act. So we were like two families. And I was impressed by two things at the time. It was the time that people started to discover AIDS. And I understood that, I saw a TV show in U.K., in London, and I bought the rights, you see there is a piece of that. In U.K. they were even more advanced than in Paris. Starting to say to the people, “You need to use condoms. You have to be careful, it’s [INAUDIBLE]—very dangerous. You have to be careful.” And so I thought, these guys, little boys and girls were like 13, 14, 15, would start their love life if I may say so, their sex life. That they will have to start with the thing about love is dangerous, be careful, use condoms. I was impressed by that. This was coming after the years where we had been very repressed, then came the ‘68 story, that love is wonderful, just do whatever you wish. Love is more than beautiful. And here comes another song. Hey, love is dangerous. So I was impressed by that. The other thing was, I was impressed by the desire of Jane, who was almost 40, to express a love story for a very young boy—still a child. I understood she was wishing to re-encounter her own adolescence, and the feelings of adolescence. So, it's a strange story because, in a way—if I may say so—she sort of falls in love with the boy, who was a friend of her daughter, when he’s in love with a pinball machine. Now, is it a pinball? No, how do you call that?
34:23 AUDIENCE
Video game?
34:24 AGNÈS VARDA
The thing you push, and the ball—
34:26 AUDIENCE
[INAUDIBLE] Pinball machine.
34:27 AGNÈS VARDA
Yes it's, it's a pinball machine called “Kung Fu Master.” And you have to—no, it's—I don't know if it's a ball, I can't remember now. It's something you have to do and you have to go on, there is a little karaté char—whatever, he has to win something, animals and people and beating and it has to go up, second floor, third floor. At the highest floor, there is a little lady which is tied to a chair, he has to deliver her. I thought it was very interesting for an adolescent to play that game. Difficult—we rented the game on the film—filming, and nobody in the crew could succeed. Only Mathieu succeeded because he exercised himself for hours.
[LAUGHTER]
35:13 AGNÈS VARDA
So, but the thing is that so, he is hooked on that game when she sort of has—but then he becomes very involved in the world—that woman was older than he is but you know, he feels he is protected. So it's a love story, but we don't know at what point in that difference of age—and it is the end of innocence, you know. And, there is a scene I like very much when we discuss it. At the end of the film, she touches him like this and she says, “Oh my god, I won't be there when you will have shaved for the first time.” It's something—it’s on the edge. So I think it's deli—délicat, comment dites?
35:56 DAVID PENDLETON
Delicate.
35:59 AGNÈS VARDA
Delicate. And, they are both very nice, the way they went on that. They were very friendly. It was like a family—the shooting was very family, but when it came to play that, they were really very much into the story and, obviously society doesn't like so much. Whatever is in the margin of classical love. I've been always interested in people vaguely off, you know, trying to do things differently or feel differently. So it's a simple film, there is no question of stricter complication. I mean, I tell the story, it's like music, you tell the story from the beginning to the end. And I hope you will enjoy it. Merci.
[APPLAUSE]
36:49 DAVID PENDLETON
Thank you very much for coming here for four nights in a row, Agnès Varda, thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
©Harvard Film Archive
