La Pointe Courte

Movieyana

A film of textures. Poetic. Meticulously shot. Striking cinematography. Affecting.

Jason

A striking debut. Existential reportage. Impressionistic and deeply felt. It is clear that Varda was radically inspired by the films Rossellini made in the early 50s with Ingrid Bergman. The collaboration here with Alain Resnais says a great deal about where these extraordinary artists were coming from in the early stages of their remarkable careers .

El Biffo

The first Nouvelle Vague was made by a woman, 5 years before Truffaut and Godard. Agnes Varda gave birth to the French New Wave at age 25. La Pointe Courte gets better with every viewing.

dionysus67

A startling film that blends neo-realism and formalism in ways that avoid lapse of the one into the other. The fusion is captured in vignettes of the fishermen's life and in the statuesque close-ups of the couple whose love is devoid of vitality. Vitality, by contrast, is what, as ontological depth and as the storyline's development in the village girl's romance in the Sunday celebrations, suffuses this liquid film.

Michael H. CLAES

Des pêcheurs tentent de survivre à la pollution et au tracas de l'administration. Belle photo NB de VARDA pour son 1r long métrage. Le blabla des Parisiens vs le verbe cru des locaux "On a déjà chié la moitié de notre merde" = Fishermen try to survive pollution & administration hassle. Great BW photo by VARDA for her 1st feature. Parisian blahblah vs the raw verb of the locals "We've already dumped half of our shit".

Stefan Drees

The camera work with its slow and tender movements is magnificent. I also liked the symbolic structuring of the visuals related to the couple (underlined by Pierre Barbaud's slighlty artificial score) and its contrast to the sequences related to the everyday life of the villagers (with use of folk music tunes). And you can see that Agnès Varda loves cats...

Zac Weber

Agnès Varda weaves together intricate mise-en-scène and gorgeous cinematography. La Pointe Courte is particularly memorable for its mix of narrative realism and formalism, and, like many of Varda's films, a poetic fascination with hands and feet.

Caitlin

In my opinion, Varda is a criminally under-appreciated director. Her films always capture the human condition in all its beauty and complexity. "La Pointe Courte," her first feature film, is no different. Against the backdrop of a working class fishing village, a couple grapples with the ways in which love changes over time.