It’s empowering to find that Varda is one of the very few women directors of the new wave and that she had written and directed La Pointe Courte (1955), which made her the pioneer of the Nouvelle Vague, without any prior experience in filmmaking. She told Criterion that she had seen virtually no other films before making such an accomplished film, which to me sounds incredible since I think most of our works these days are influenced and inspired by the works of others. But a quick search lets me know that Varda said in her 2008 autobiographical documentary that the film was inspired by William Faulkner's The Wild Palms.
One visual element that stood out to me was the director’s tendency to incorporate elements of the village in most of the shots of the couple. You’d always see something that represented the seaside village whenever the couple was present: a body of water, a part of a boat, the weeds etc. Even when they were lying in bed nearing the end of the film, the shadows of the water in the canal was reflected on their ceiling. I believe it created a striking composition between the couple, who felt like they didn't belong to the village, especially Elle, and the scenic and rural seaside village.
One shot that stood out to me in the film was one where Elle was staring straight into the camera but half of her face was blocked by Lui's profile. I’m not sure what purpose this composition server, but it is certainly a unique one because I’ve not seen such a shot in any other films we’ve watched before. Not long after that shot, we were greeted with a shot of Elle staring directly into the camera. Her monotonous voice made me think that she was reciting a poem more than recounting her own love affair with Lui. This may be the director's way of representing Elle’s futile attempts at engaging the audience to believe in their love, which ultimately proved to be a failure due to the fact that she couldn't even believe it herself. I've derived this theory after seeing the shot where Elle said "Yes. You." while looking straight into the camera. And their interminable “speech” about their troubled love sounds more to me like platitudes (“love is about choice,” “I’m contributing more to our relationship than you,” “let's settle down with me”) than an exclusive account of Elle and Lui’s love story. Perhaps that was why Varda wanted the actors to speak in a detached manner: she’s trying to embody a phase all couples would have to go through at one point of their relationship, and Elle and Lui were not their own characters but all of us who were in love. I think it’s also kind of ironic that the two professional actors were being perceived as doing a bad job in acting while the non-professional villagers were excelling in their roles.
The way the director composed the mise-en-scene in the film was beautiful as well. I especially like the first shot of a white kitten curled up in a basket and the landscape shots of the couple walking into the weeds and above a derelict building. I noticed the director’s fixation on objects too, particularly cats. It took me a while, but I think cats may be a commentary on a kind of domestic life that was unimaginable to Elle and Varda herself who had lived many years in bustling Paris. Cats were everywhere in the film, and the domestic animal was used by the women in the village to illustrate their lack of say in their own reproductive rights. I feel like this problem is very typical in a secluded village where women do not have the access to resources for protected sex and end up having 7 or more children as Carmacci did in the film. It was devastating when her baby died, but the film frames the death as more like a piece of gossip than a tragic event. (But the mise-en-scene of the scene stood out to me! Two doors= one framed the grieving mother and the other of her living children. The congregating villagers looked inside both frames.) One last thing: I really like how the film used natural sunlight to illuminate the shots most of the time. I imagine it would look even more beautiful if the film is shot in full color!
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