Varda's second film on her late husband sticks closer to documentary than the fascinating Jacquot de Nantes, and is perhaps closer to a kind of (Demy-esque!) affirmative bittersweetness than the desperate sadness of the footage of Demy dying (though this was never spelt out till years later) of AIDS-related complications. Varda is unsurpassed at the apparently free-wheeling, but in fact beautifully and painstakingly crafted, 'documentary' style she increasingly made her own: the film thus not only captures a good part of what makes Demy's work so compelling, but also tells us much about Varda's own approach to film. The title should be taken as a key--as much as Demy's biographical world, Varda means the world that his films create, and the worlds of his audience that they in turn enable and participate in. This is her main, gently unfolding thesis: Demy's films, which, for Varda, appeal in particular to women and children, are uniquely open in their approach. Demy (and Varda) make generous offerings that offers viewers space for fantasy, illusion, and the play-making that, for Varda, is so central to filmic creation. Yet they both know--Varda perhaps more so than Demy (who could never have made a film like Vagabond)--that this play-making arises from, and as a way to make certain kinds of sense out of, a world marked by inequalities fostered by war, by gender and by class relations. And Varda, of course, expresses this with far greater subtlety, delicacy and telling detail than can be mustered in a few hundred words here.
Review of The World of Jacques Demy
