'Documenteur' is an interesting essay, but not one of the milestones in the filmography of Agnes Varda. The film follows a French woman, just out of a relationship, looking for housing and than living for a while in a non-proviledged neighborhood of Los Angeles. It's an interesting combination - fiction inspired from the biography of the director who at that point in her life was separated, the lead role is played by Sabine Mamou, her only film as an actress, while the kid is Mathieu Demy, Agnes Varda's son (and formidable acting as a kid - he will become later a professional actor). Much of the rest is film in the streets with non-professional actors, with some nude and sex scenes interleaved to make us feel the loneliness of the character. A verbose text translates to us in parallel her feelings. The combination is interesting, but there is no real story here, and the film is too short, and its ending to abrupt to make complete sense. My overall feeling was to have watched a filmed essay, an experimental movie, but not really a full feature film.

This is a review of two separate, yet intimately connected films by Agnes Varda, Mur Murs and Documenteur. If viewed independently of each other the films are interesting but not quite remarkable. But taken as a two sided whole, I find the film(s) as impressive as anything I've seen by Varda, which is saying a lot. Varda found herself living in LA with her young son during a period in which she was separated from her husband, contemplating divorce. Mur Murs is a fairly traditionally presented, if visually arresting, documentary tour of Los Angeles by way of the city's murals. Varda dissects the ways that marginalized communities of color, in particular, have used public art to document their culture and struggles. The filmmaker seems to find the city both strange and comforting. As much as Los Angeles is a huge, international city, it also seems a world where everyone is compartmentalized away from each other. The loneliness of the metropolis seems to compliment Varda's mood. Documenteur is a short "narrative" film that is nakedly autobiographical- a French writer finds herself in self-imposed exile in Los Angeles with her young son (played by Varda's actual son) after separating from her husband. The English translation of the title is Emotion Picture, and indeed, the film has the intimacy of a diary entry. Documenteur interpolates the faces and locations discovered in Mur Murs into Varda's personal experience. Her stand-in is played by the woman who interviews artists and passers-by in the earlier documentary and many of its buildings and murals serve as settings for the "fiction film." Viewed as a single, two part work, the films are a powerfully Proustian experience. In some sense, I would go so far as to say that Varda one ups Proust. Whereas the French writer investigates only the ways in which sensory experience and memory shape each other and result in the consciousness of the European bourgeois, the French filmmaker also takes into consideration the ways that landscapes, those objects that inspire sensory experience, are themselves shaped by power and resistance.

This has to be one of the most underrated film in the history of cinema and for sure among the best films to come out of the 80s.

Documenteur starts where Agnès Varda's Mur Murs ends, but they have very little in common and do not need to be seen together.

Mur Murs is all about the external life of people. What we put on the outside of your walls. Documenteur is about our internal life, what we hide.

The title may suggest that it is a documentary but it is not. It is filmed in a documentary style, very much like Abbas Kiarostami did in his Koker trilogy. It is also inspired by her own life and Agnès Varda even uses her own son and her own editor (Sabine Mamou) to play the roles of Varda's assistance (but in reality both are a stand in for Agnès Varda and her own son). In one scene Sabine Mamou reads the narration for Mur Murs and when it is played back, we hear the voice of Varda. Sabine Mamou asks if this is really her voice and is told that we usually don't recognize our own voice. Agnès Varda was making a film about her own life but did not realize before much later that she had made a self biographic film. She did not recognize her own voice. Art imitates life.

This is a hauntingly beautiful film. Poetic, ambivalent, melancholic and meditative. It takes place in LA and a lot of the shots are at the shore. The west was a symbol of hope. But what happens when you can't go any farther west? When you are at the shore and you have lost hope, you are full of desires you can't fulfill, your life is fleeting way and you feel like you are drifting farther and farther from where you want to be.

There is almost no story here. The film focuses on emotions, a state of mind. If you like atmospheric and poetic films then this masterpiece is your cup of tea. Watch it and spread the good news. This film needs to be seen!