Interviews with Agnès Varda and Valérie Mréjen

Je crois que les gens sont faits des endroits non seulement où ils ont été élevés, mais qu'ils aiment, je crois que le décor nous habite, nous dirige […] en comprenant mieux les gens on comprend mieux les lieux, en comprenant mieux les lieux on comprend mieux les gens.

Agnès Varda¹

The following informal interviews were conducted before an audience at the University of London's Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies (26-27 October 2006). It was a rare privilege and pleasure to hear Agnès Varda and Valérie Mréjen talk at length (and, in Varda's case, in English) about their past, present, and future works and their evolving creative processes. We hope that the insights, anecdotes, revelations, and often unexpected observations that our discussions elicited will prove to be as much of a treasure trove for our readers as they were for the original audience. In the following pages, each creator opens up unpredictable directions and ways of thinking about filmmaking in general and especially, although not exclusively, in relation to our key dual themes of gender and space. We are deeply grateful to Agnès Varda and to Valérie Mréjen for the brilliance of their analysis, their wit, and the amazing grace with which they shared their thoughts.

Interview with Agnès Varda

M-CB and SJ: How would you relate the concept of space to your film work?

AV: We know as filmmakers, writers, and artists that when we have finished something it doesn't belong to us at all, it belongs to the people who see it and enjoy it or not. So it's always odd, it makes you feel like split in two.

If you open people, you'll see a landscape, and if you open me, you'll see beaches. When you ask what sort of landscape I'd use to describe myself, I'd answer that we have certain basic landscapes within us. It doesn't mean I spend my time on the beach or see other places within me, but it's like a reference—l'horizontalité—horizontalness or that wonderful word "heterotopic." For me, space, cinema, and even installation are three important things that are connected, and more than space alone. Space goes with duration, it goes with light—so I cannot imagine a landscape, or a mental space, which is somewhere, elsewhere, in my own work, which is not related to light, to duration and to the relation between duration, space, and impression. I would say that when we are impressed, the first look at somebody, the first gaze says something. Then, we may of course change our attitude. It's the same for a landscape, a space. Because I was doing so many documentaries, including The Gleaners, what you quoted is true [see quotation above], because if you approach somebody, this person is surrounded by his/her environment.² It's more than a landscape: when I ask non-actors to act they always do it in their own costume, in their own place, with their own tools, because they know how to behave, it's what they're used to. And if they can behave in their own space and in their own rhythm—we can come back to duration—you can ask them to take part in your project.

Cléo from 5 to 7 was really about 2 times—objective time, the clock, the exact time, and subjective time—as we all know, when you wait it's endless and when you have a good time it goes fast. I wanted to give the feeling of objective time but also another sense of time, with Cléo's meetings and impressions. At the end of the film, she meets a soldier on leave from the Algerian War. He's afraid of his life there, and I wanted to show a different experience of time. I remember wondering, how can I do this in the space of half an hour? I remember doing a close-up of...