Bah! Agnes Varda is the truest Impressionist filmmaker in cinema. I think she describes her film perfectly when she defines the Impressionist painters as artists who see the sadness behind the beauty of their images. Of all the bullshit stories about happiness, this film perversely portrays an idyllic love with a melancholic undercurrent that avoids cliché by making a satire out of the dominant male point of view that has a hold on movies.

The colours are brilliant, the mozart is gorgeous, the people are beautiful, the dialogue is ridiculously romantic, and all of it is exaggerated with poetic tongue in cheek humour. I suppose the idea of it is that love as we know it is a suppression of our absolute desires, a sacrifice that must be made, as it must be with any ideal. So, there is a warning in the film that no matter how modern we are, how much we give in to our desires, and little is suppressed, that we are destined to romance without compromise- without context.

The dvd has some delightful insights on the film and ultimately forms an essential document on the exploration of happiness. For all the whimsical and dreamy shades in the fabric of happiness, there is also a shroud of pragmatism and natural human instinct that envelopes it. Love must be accepted with all of it’s complications and happiness is the silence of unhappiness. It lasts for a while and then the unexpected happens and we must move on. I love Agnes Varda.