Les Créatures (1966)
Directed by Agnès Varda

Film Review

Les Créatures is arguably the most intriguing work - certainly one of the most provocative - from Agnès Varda, one of France's leading women filmmakers.  Varda's fourth feature bears scant resemblance to the three distinctive films that preceded it, which includes Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), a curious reflection on mortality.  With its peculiar mélange of genres (comedy, thriller, fantasy and eroticism), Les Créatures coul easily fit into the oeuvre of Varda's French New Wave contemporary, Jean-Luc Godard, were it not for its obvious feminine perspective which sets it apart from other defining works of the Nouvelle Vague.  The film starts out looking like a wry parody of a psychological drama, with the kind of discordantly eerie music that became the trademark of another of Varda's contemporaries, Claude Chabrol.  Then, about halfway through, the film veers off in a totally unexpected direction and becomes unimaginably bizarre, like a Roman Polanski film that has gone totally off the rails, as it delves into various philosophical themes such as the existence of free will.

The inspired pairing of Catherine Deneuve and Michel Piccoli (later famously reunited in Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour (1967)) is one of the film's main selling points, but despite this star billing Les Créatures was poorly received when it was first released in 1966.  The reaction of the critics to the film was hostile and effectively slammed the brakes on Varda's film making career for a while.  Undeterred, Varda went on to make some significant films in the following decades and she would ultimately - and deservedly - regain her reputation as one of the most important auteur filmmakers of her generation.

The style of Les Créatures is more eerily unsettling than its subject matter.  Like Polanski's Repulsion (1965), which Deneuve headlined the previous year, the film propels us into an unfamiliar subjective reality that has its own peculiar logic which leaves the spectator confused and disoriented.  The disjointed editing, where apparent normality is inter-cut with a bizarre fantasy chess game; the grotesque caricatures who behave more like animated puppets than creatures we might recognise as real, living beings; and the seemingly interminable visual metaphors...  Varda presents us with a bizarre fusion of orthogonal realities that is scarily nightmarish and yet fascinating to watch, and the challenge of deriving some sense from all this is probably the most appealing aspect of this weirdly idiosyncratic film.

Film Synopsis

Still suffering from the trauma of a road accident, a writer named Edgar finds himself afflicted with a mild case of writer's block.  With his wife Mylène pregnant with their first child and badly in need of some rest and recuperation, Edgar decides that they should take a break at some remote spot.  The small island of Noirmoutier off the west coast of France seems ideal for their purpose.  Sparsely populated, this tiny windswept rock in the Atlantic will make a welcome change from the bustle of the big city.  As his mind and body recover from the injuries he sustained in the accident, Edgar happily sets about writing his next novel, taking his inspiration from the curious breed of people he meets on the island.  Mylène still hasn't regained her voice, however, and it worries her husband that she can still only communicate with him by writing notes.

The arrival of the writer and his wife is not welcomed by the islanders, who, a tight-knit group of individuals, regard them with suspicion and mistrust.  It isn't long before their cold forbearance of the strangers turns to open hostility.  Edgar and his wife have yet to discover the discord that runs right through the island community.  Some have good reason to despise their neighbours, others are content to wallow in abject solitude.  Gradually, the writer's impression of the island changes as he begins to sense the nastiness and sickness that lies beneath its seemingly idyllic surface.  The person who most preoccupies him is a lonely old widower, Ducasse, who has just taken delivery of several mysterious crates.  Edgar becomes fixated on knowing what secret project the widower is preoccupied with, convinced it holds the key to understanding the islanders' strange behaviour...