La Pointe Courte

1955 [FRENCH]

Action / Drama / Romance

13
IMDb Rating 7.0/10 10 4778 4.8K

southern france woman director new wave complicated relationships

Plot summary

A penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple and a documentary-like look at the daily struggles of the inhabitants of Sète in the South of France.

Director

Agnès Varda Photo
Agnès Varda

Top cast

Philippe Noiret Photo
Philippe Noiret as Lui
Silvia Monfort Photo
Silvia Monfort as Elle
Marcel Jouet Photo
Marcel Jouet as Raphäel Scotto
Albert Lubrano Photo
Albert Lubrano as Albert Soldino
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
742.84 MB
988*720
French 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 20 min
Seeds 4
1.35 GB
1472*1072
French 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 20 min
Seeds 8

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by dbdumonteil 8 / 10

There is no new wave, there is only the ocean (Chabrol).

Agnès Varda's career began by the seaside in a small fisher port near Sète and temporarily ended in 2009 with "Les Plages D'Agnès" (Agnès' Beaches). Her debut was a commercial fiasco, only one theater in Paris showed it when it was released (Jean Louis Chéret, Studio-Parnasse).The part of the man was first intended for George Wilson but he became ill and Philippe Noiret replaced him. This actor didn't like his performance, he thought he was too young (26) and the choice of Wilson was relevant (34). He said he was absent and the character eluded him. The critics thrashed him.Hailed as the first movie of the Nouvelle Vague, the movie owes at least as much to Italian Neo-realism (Rossellini's "Viaggio In Italia" which depicted a couple's trip whose marriage was on the rocks and Visconti's "La Terra Trema" which dealt with the plight of the fishermen in a small village).What is definitely "Nouvelle Vague" is the shoestring budget (four times less than "Breathless") and the literary, intellectual, "overwritten" dialogs which seem today almost unbearable; this bourgeois couple complaining about their heartaches, contemplating their navels, walks through the crowd as if the inhabitants of the village didn't exist. They don't relate to them: the only move the man makes is to give an ice-cream to a child. That's not much for someone who spent his whole childhood in the place. Filming on location wasn't the Nouvelle Vague's invention as too many naive people still believe today; for the record "l'Hirondelle Et La Mésange" was filmed entirely on location in...1928.The depiction of the village wanders drastically from the precepts of the Nouvelle Vague busy being born but recalls the two Italian works mentioned above. We feel that Varda cares for them even if her two principals don't. She cares for their problems with the food hygiene people or with the coastguards'. She feels for Raphaël the young man to be jailed for five days as the gendarmes do for him. We learn he is an Inscrit Maritime (that was the name of the conscripts who lived on the seaside) and he is to do his military service: even if Varda doesn't mention it, we do know he'll have to fight in a dirty war (the Algeria war), like Antoine in "Cleo De 5 à 7".I don't think like the precedent user that Varda's debut was her best. Actually "Cléo..." is much better. There are similarities between the two works: both Cléo and the couple move in a world they can't relate to. But the key to the 1961 effort is the fact that Cléo opens up and thanks to a soldier soon returning to fight becomes aware that people exist outside her petty world. When she takes her glasses off, what a symbol! But for the man and the woman of "La Pointe Courte" (The Short Headland) -they are only referred through this, bearing no names- they will stay with their inflated egos, their selfishness."They are always talking, they mustn't be happy" says a fisher's wife.The short headland was a blind alley.
Reviewed by MartinHafer 2 / 10

A dissenting voice....

I noticed that all the reviews currently on IMDb for "La Pointe-Courte" are very positive--and some are simply glowing. Well, let me be a voice of dissent, as I disliked the film intensely. While I could see their point that some of the camera-work was nice, I found the film to be pretentious and boring.The film looks much like a French version of an Italian Neo-Realist film. The actors appear to be non-actors--local people from some French fishing community and the story, like a Neo-Realist film, is about ordinary people and ordinary things. Because of that, I found the first 33 minutes rather dull. Seeing folks in this fishing village only seemed interesting for a short time--then I failed to see any sort of point to the film. And, just when I thought it couldn't get much worse, it did! A newly wed couple you saw early in the film is now arguing--but arguing with absolutely no energy or intensity at all. And, oddly, apparently four years has passed since their last scene--though there is no sense of time passing at all in the film. And, instead of showing any emotion during this strange sequence, they TALK, TALK, TALK--while the camera plays annoying games with their profiles. Then, you see a closeup of a dead cat (who the @^## wants to see that?!) and then some eels. It's incredibly artsy-fartsy--that's for sure.This simply is a film that normal folks would hate intensely. While I have a high tolerance for art films and have probably reviewed more than anyone on IMDb, this film was just too intensely boring and pretentious and made me wonder WHO the audience was for it. If you think I am wrong, try showing the film to a few friends and family members--I would venture that most would feel pretty much like me about the film.
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