Category: Documentary

This documentary presents performances and interviews with various female comedians working in the late 1980s and 1990s. These women work in a predominantly male oriented, often sexist, arena and the film lets them talk about how they handle such things as choosing material and dealing with hecklers. While far from comprehensive, it does talk a little about earlier comedians such as Lucille Ball and Fanny Brice who inspired this generation of artists. The interviewees involved come from a wide range of success such as Whoopi Goldberg and Ellen Degeneres to lesser known Canadian comics which offers quite a variety of perspective. There is some weakness in the performance scenes as there are some that are just not as funny as others, but comedy is admittedly subjective. I was never a fan of Geri Jewell when she guest starred on The Facts of Life, but I found her performances here to be some of the funniest in the film. 

I sometimes question the frequency Agnès Varda places herself in her documentaries. Luckily, she remains an appealing narrator and her insights about what she’s experiencing gives quite a bit of insight into her artistic process. The title here doesn’t shy away from the fact that she herself is a subject. Her focus in this film is on those in society who choose to glean food, and sometimes objects, for financial, ethical, or creative reasons. The subjects throughout are engaging and represent a wide range of French culture from traditional harvest gleaners to urban market gleaners to a Michelin chef to lawyers presenting the legalities of gleaning. It makes an interesting companion to Just Eat It in that they both shed a bright light on food waste. In both cases, there is discussion on the non-existent laws that wasters like to cite to justify their waste and the actual laws that encourage the resources to be shared.

The original film was so popular that Varda revisited a number of the original subjects, as well as meeting with some who were inspired by the first film, a couple of years later. The format and telling aren’t much different than the original film, but gleaning and those who glean remains a subject that is interesting enough to expand upon. Even though she made a slight attempt to pull herself away from being a subject herself, Agnès again brings herself into the art discussing her own experiences making and later promoting her film.

I always loved Suzi Quatro’s Leather Tuscadero character on Happy Days, but I was thoroughly ignorant of her music career beyond that. This documentary follows her career all the way from her days performing in a garage band with her sisters to the current day. It’s surprising that she never really made it big as a rock star in the United States. Her music rocks as hard as any other musicians and was a great influence on many female musicians as evidenced by the number willing to appear in the film and testify to her talents. While Suzi’s career was fairly wholesome compared to many other rockers, the film doesn’t shy away from showing what warts there are in her story. It’s almost amusing to see how snippy she and her sisters can be with regards to some aspects of their long history together.