Jacquot, Agnès Varda (France, 1991)

(Jacquot de Nantes). Inspired by the stories and memories of her husband Jacques Demy, Agnès Varda created an affecting and enlightening portrait of the artist as a young boy, exploring the inspiration for Demy’s films in the everyday world of his Nantes upbringing. Filming in the places of Jacquot’s youth—his father’s garage and the family kitchen where life indeed was all singing, if not all dancing; the rural home where Demy and his brother spent the war years—Varda beautifully employed Nantes residents as her nonprofessional actors. Varda’s conceit is to have everything that feeds Jacquot’s creative world—the puppet shows, the movie posters, Snow White (on whom he has a crush), a flamboyant aunt from Rio—in the saturated color of his own later movies, clips from which are relevantly interspersed here. But ironically, it is the black-and-white in which Varda so richly and skillfully evokes French life in the forties that feeds our own insatiable cinephilia. Three cinematographers worked with Varda on this tribute, with Agnès Godard contributing the longest segment.

• Written by Varda. Photographed by Patrick Blossier, Agnès Godard, Georges Strouve. With Philippe Maron, Edouard Joubeaud, Laurent Monnier, Brigitte De Villepoix. (118 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W/Color, 35mm, From Institut Français, permission Cine-Tamaris)