Le Bonheur

Director: Agnès Varda

1965 / 79min / DCP

Perhaps Varda’s most purely beautiful movie, calling into question the price of beauty, further exploring themes developed in her 1962 breakthrough Cléo from 5 to 7. Carpenter François (Jean-Claude Drouot) loves his wife (Claire Drouot) and he loves his mistress (Marie-France Boyer), so why shouldn’t they all make house together? The muted pastels and luxuriant soft-focus cinematography by Claude Beausoleil and Jean Rabier suggest a vision of earthly paradise, though beneath this glacé surface lurks a sly critique of François’s thoughtless hedonism, at once glorying in the sybaritic sensuality and conveying the barrenness of the single-minded, selfish pursuit of happiness.

Part of Visionary Auteurs: Five Decades of mk2