Jane B. par Agnes V.

Director: Agnès Varda

1988 / 99min / DCP

Varda’s always unexpected, inspired, and capering “imaginary biopic” of Jane Birkin, the British-born chanteuse, actress and model, inspired by Birkin’s confession to the filmmaker of anxieties pertaining to her imminent 40th birthday. Rather than produce just another by-the-numbers artist doc, Varda places revealing, intimate filmed conversations with Birkin alongside vivid fantasy sequences that locate the Swinging London star in a dizzying variety of tableaux spanning the history of Western art, inhabiting a wide and wild variety of roles. A meditation not only on Birkin’s career, but on the relationship between photography and painting, and how the traditional artist-muse dynamic changes when it becomes a woman-to-woman conversation. “A game that explored how we could be represented, and a touching way of presenting Jane Birkin with truth and imagination.”—Varda