Agnès Varda was a woman of many talents, not only does she have a creative mind, she has a creative voice. She help to change the way many people think about fim, she broke normal standards, and then established her own. The films she has made has changed and will forever impact the world of cinema. One film specifically that she made, The Beaches of Agnès, which is an compelling example of one of her essay films, is a film in the structure of a self-portrait. This film is like no other documentary, the film is her memories, captured by footage from her films, and visits the places as well as people she filmed. The film is a piece of art, a poem, a song, a celebration of life. The formal/stylistic elements in the film such as voice-over, reenactments, and the use of mirrors, in addition to many others, all contribute to and create a sense self-awareness/self-invention. With the combination of all these elements, a new type of documentary is created.
A voice-over consists of an added diegetic soundtrack that is put in the film. It provides information/evidence to the audience that is not exactly available within the world of the film. In a fiction film we hear the voice of one of the characters in the narrative, while in a documentary film the voice is usually in a way an disembodied narrator, or an embodied narrator in some cases. In this specific case of The Beaches of Agnès, one of the first things to notice is that it uses a female voice. Agnes Varda emphasized in earlier years the feminist voice in several of her films, she wanted to give females the voice they deserved. Also, for example in this film, The Beaches of Agnès, she uses a poetic voice-over narration to convey what the ocean really means to her and what kind of a role these “beaches” had in her life. These include the beaches of Belgium where she was born and Sète, in the south of France, where she lived as a child during World War II. Walking on the sand and looking through her camera, Varda is followed by her crew, setting up mirrors that are different shapes and sizes on the beach. As the mirrors are being moved around, she remembers moments of her childhood and recreates them through her narration, reenactments and the use of sounds. Her commentary is created by the voice-over narration reinforced by different structural elements and music along the film. With these elements there is a sense of realism and by talking about her childhood stories/feelings and doing reconstructions of her life, she creates a personal narration. The audience can feel a more intimate relationship to the film and get a better understanding of who Agnes really was and see her how her creative mind works . The correlation between the images and Varda’s comments are also rather complex. On one hand it has a personal auteur voice, but on the other hand there is a strong relation between memory and film. Also,Varda uses her memory as a tool for illustrating and validating her story. She depends on her own thoughts as well as remembering things during her life, on her personal photos, family interviews, and childhood experiences. At one point while she speaks, she walks backwards on the beach, it’s almost like a metaphor for her delving into her memories and the past. The voice-over in The Beaches of Agnès becomes a key element to understand its auteur and abstract quality, Agnes was greatly influenced by the auteur theory and thought of the camera as her “pen”. Because of its form of expression as a self-portrait, it creates an contingency for self-reflection and self-expression within the film. Throughout the Beaches of Agnès the voice establishes itself through different techniques like the camera movements, re-enactments, the external voices of Varda’s friends, her own footage, music, and other aesthetical elements to create a reflection along the narration that is personal. This documentary is a way for Agnes to speak her truth without actually saying a lot herself.
Reenactments are another common technique for representing past events in cinema and is used throughout Varda’s film. For a long time they have been used, reenactments stay within the narrative structure, for instance in films where the filmmaker uses his or her own biography as the main source of inspiration. In The Beaches of Agnès, Varda uses her own experiences and feelings, while she recreates some important moments of her life. Reenactments do not have to be realistic recreations as in feature films, “Fantasy is combined with documentary when she recreates the scenes in the photos of herself, a little girl, dressed in striped bathing suit and strapped bathing suit, with children today whom she has had dress in similar outfits for the camera: “Moi, je rêve de voir une petite fille en maillot de bain rayé et un autre avec de grandes bretelles” (“I dream of seeing a little girl in a striped bathing suit and in another suit with big straps”) (Julio), but in this case they are used to recreate past events in a different creative and a more stylized form. In addition, reenactments are not only used to represent historical events in a documentary, but also people that have passed away and experiences from the past that are no longer available to film on camera. Therefore, the images/footage used plays an incredibly important role in describing the people and moments represented. In The Beaches of Agnès, Varda uses different footage like old photos, sounds, interviews, and videos, to revive, relive, and recreate different moments and different people that played an important role in her life. People like her late husband, Jacques Demy, her parents, friends and the different dreams and experiences of her life, continue to exist in the footage she uses. The people and situations are reconstructed through the available resources Varda shows in the film, she keeps her memories and experiences alive by recreating them. She gets to look at it from the outside and gets to relive everything from the outside looking in.
The Beaches of Agnès among its different uncontrolled elements uses mirrors in a symbolic and self-reflexive way, which balances the personal and poetic style as well as the depth of the film. In the opening scene where Varda and her crew set up a range of mirrors and frames of different sizes, on a Belgian beach, is when the mirrors are mostly used. Varda guides her crew and tells them how she wants the mirrors to face the ocean, each of the mirrors reflecting a different angle, some near the water, some reflecting one another, some reflecting herself, the crew and the people walking on the beach. The mirrors symbolize her self-portrait and Varda walking backwards in time through places she lived, people she cared for, her thoughts and feelings. The viewer is engaged with Varda’s own experiences, “The effect of such a process is the display of the labyrinthine quality of the process itself-an operation coinciding with a play of images in which water and sand, faces and waves, glass and weeds intermingle without merging into one or gaining internal coherence” (Torlasco), the way that the mirrors are used creates a contract between the viewer and the film. Varda’s own self-expression as a self-portrait, from the level of the viewer and from the level of the film as a reflection of society. The fact that the films starts off with a scene full of mirrors has a great significance, since they are used as a tool to represent Varda’s life. The audience is aware of the personal content and intimacy of the film from the very start of the film. As a way to connect with her past, the film also mirrors the combination of Varda’s cinematic and artistic career. The mirrors are used as a forced technique also include a certain level of consciousness, a different visual take and can create a certain effect over society. The mirrors are used as an element of interaction between the filmmaker, the audience as well as the whole production process. Showing the arrangement of all the mirrors in the first scene, invites all the viewers to somewhat participate in the film in a more personal way. Varda revealed not only the process of making her film, but shared her deepest memories with the world through a sensitive and honest story.
In conclusion, through the use of the voice-over, reenactments, and mirrors, Varda highlights her self- invention. Again, this is noticed from the start of the film where she reminds the viewer that she changed her name from Arlette to Agnès. Self-invention and self-awareness are key elements of her self-portrait. The different uses of the material along the film creates a versatile self-portrait collage, and through the voice over and constant movement from one source to another, the film explores different parts from Varda’s life in a new and inventive way. The Beaches of Agnès proves that Varda is still changing, exploring and experimenting with different sources. Through her film, it is possible to see cinema as a moving form that is a changing medium and we see how cinema can be created from a different perspective. In contrast to more traditional documentaries, this film does not focus on the real over the imagined, Varda’s imagination is unique and it can be seen in the The Beaches of Agnes.