Les Creatures (1966)

 Agnes Varda's "Les Creatures"


Agnes Varda once described her 1966 film "Les Creatures" as an attempt to show the messy nature of inspiration. This notion is convey through the protagonist, Edgar, who is a writer attempting to scribe a science-fiction story using the characters and places he is surrounded by in his small town. Varda seems to create a sense of disorder as she mixes fantasy with reality throughout. 

There is so much uncertainty about what is really happening in the film that I often didn't notice that things were slipping into an altered reality or dream state, even when things got really out of hand. I still consider "Les Creatures" to be entirely in the "new wave" mold, as Varda gleefully continues to push the boundaries of editing and construction. With Varda's realization, I get so swept away by what is real and what is not and eventually come to the conclusion that these lines between reality don't really seem to matter much. Varda seems to be iterating that the product created by an artist has so much to do with that artist and the world they live in (even the more immediate world), that it becomes completely a moot point where the line between truth lies. 

In the end, we are all just baseless creatures acting out our own instinctive impulses. Every piece of art attempts to identity these impulses and the interpretation always vary. "Les Creatures" notions that, despite art being a falsity in narrative, it still manages to dig at the age-old questions of what it means to be human.



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