For all its melancholy and its profound awareness of mortality, The Beaches of Agnès is one of the jolliest, more life-affirming self-portraits in recent cinema.

| Jul 6, 2018

Varda, free from fear and shame, turns her tale of a life lived in art into a work of art in its own right, and one of her best-a rapturous tribute to life itself.

| Apr 25, 2016

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 18, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

As evidenced in The Beaches of Agnès, Varda is too venerable to be hip -- and too wholly alive to be venerated.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 28, 2010

The Beaches of Agnes is a work of delightful contradictions from a filmmaker who has always played by her own rules.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 18, 2009

Filmmakers don't usually do documentaries about themselves, but Agnes Varda's The Beaches of Agnes is good enough to start a trend.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 30, 2009

A puckish, moving and wonderfully eccentric tour through her life.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 4, 2009

A witty and engaging cine-autobiography.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 4, 2009

Although you will get more out of this self-portrait if you're a film-lover, it can be enjoyed simply for its touching, eloquent reflections on life in general.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 4, 2009

It's impossible not to open your heart to this film.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 4, 2009

A loose-leaf diary in which the pages are shuffled by instinct, wit and surreal art.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 4, 2009

There's not much discipline and it's way too long, but in common with her best work, it has a dreamy sort of charm.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 4, 2009

A little self-absorbed but a charming, visually elegant portrait of a life both ordinary and extraordinary.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 4, 2009

Tender, truthful, happy-making: The Beaches of Agnes is a wonderful film by a wonderful woman.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 2, 2009

Compelling and intriguing, this is the perfect director's autobiography.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 2, 2009

Varda recalls her childhood, her adulthood, her politics, and how both her films and her two children were born. She doesn't just show us, she takes us inside of it all, inside of her. It's a reverie.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 1, 2009

The warm, elfin filmmaker makes a fine companion through this vivid story of a life well lived, reminding us at the end of how we create our own safe havens within our families.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 24, 2009

A captivating cine-memoir, impressionistic and surrealistic, surveying Varda's formidable career as a still photographer, filmmaker, documentarian, and life force.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 3, 2009

In this visually witty 2008 memoir she's poring over her own past and its artifacts.

| Aug 20, 2009