Daguerréotypes (1975)
One of my jobs is teaching English online, to people all over the world. One of those people happens to live like 10 minutes from me on foot. She also loves movies and art and our lessons are entirely occupied with those – and the feelings about them.
Talking about movies we watch when feeling stressed, she mentioned Agnès Varda's "Daguerréotypes", a movie I'm unsure I ever heard of. It's available on the Criterion Channel, so I watched it.
The silent ur-Wes Anderson sequence of still lifes, the disarray of each shop (messes really), the shopkeepers’ smocks, the old ads and displays as much part of the structures as the windows or walls, the butcher wiping his apron but never his hands, the mom who shits on her son for struggling with everything, the guy taking out gas cans with a lit cigarette in his mouth, the small change, the buttons (three, white), the bouffants, le pain quotidien, the old lady who touches a coat and seems to disapprove of it because it too must be inside right now, a flank steak here, a couple ribs there, things taken from shelves or restored to boxes but not with much care, memories, dreams, origin stories (seemingly everyone from somewhere else), the entrances and the exits, the opening and the closing.
So many moments in this movie are exquisite.