Agnès Varda arrived as a filmmaker before the french new wave became a known trend (La Pointe Courte, 1955), and endured in the culture decades after it faded from public consciousness. Overlooked doesn’t begin to describe the biases she faced as a young female director; at least one american critic labeled Cléo From 5 to 7 as a derivative clone of earlier new wave films, not aware that Varda had released a stylistically daring feature film before Chabrol, Truffaut, or Godard. Her third film, Le Bonheur, arrived as Godard was being crowned the artiste-du-jour, and while her film shared a jury prize with Polanski’s Repulsion at Berlin, she would receive criticism for the film’s “absurdity” and “immaturity”. To make sense of Le Bonheur’s place in history, we talk second wave feminism, polyamory, and mixing documentary and fiction.Next week: Materialists (2025), Berlin Film Festival, and more!Send questions and comments to [email protected] by Zachary Domes (hetchy on letterboxd) and J Brooks Young (jyoun on letterboxd). Music by hetchy

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