Synopsis
In her wonderful 2000 movie, “The Gleaners and I,” the French director Agnès Varda takes a nonfiction ramble through the world of everyday treasure hunting, in urban markets where the poor pick through the leftover lettuce and in trash bins where throwaway people forage for thrown-away sustenance. Wielding a small digital video camera that now feels like an extension of her body, Ms. Varda made a case for gleaning as a philosophy of life, as a way of seeing and of being in a world in which remnants — food, yes, but also old toys and other such poignant castoffs — are cherished and used rather than carelessly discarded.



In her latest, the similarly glorious and generous “The Beaches of Agnès,” Ms. Varda has created something of a sequel to “The Gleaners and I.” Much like that earlier work, it is at once an illustration of the fine art of foraging and an autobiographical portrait, narrated by its self-described “little old lady, pleasantly plump.” (She’s now 81.) As before, Ms. Varda is picking through the world, close to home and far afield, finding images that please her and give her pause, like her wrinkled hand, the one not holding the camera, that she scrutinizes with rue if no obvious regret. — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times