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The Beaches of Agnès by Agnès Varda. 2008.
Is probably the best film I've seen this year. Admittedly, I haven't seen too many; on the other hand, the year's almost over.
Toward the end, Varda sits in a room that looks Venetian-blinded. She sits on a rough stool made of film cans. Then you realise that the blinds are really film, celluloid hanging reel by reel. Her house of cinema is literal and, in the moment the instability and transience of material itself is made clear. She lives, as she says, in a house of cinema, but what does that really mean?
There were many, many lovely moments: not least seeing Godard without his dark glasses, Chris Marker's alter-ego, Resnais editing on an old Moviola, Jacques Demy aging before one's eyes. Also the mirrors on the beach, the art installation-nature of Varda's filmmaking, her self-appraisal that, for all its laying bare, slyly suggests that even spilling everything can leave you knowing nothing.