Digression and return: Aesthetics and politics in Agnès Varda's Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (2000)

Abstract

Agnès Varda's Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (2000) was made by a film-maker with a history of engagement with political issues and a powerful aesthetic fascination. Reading the film in both the context of Varda's oeuvre and of its production during a period of political reawakening in France, this article suggests that despite its apparent disorder, Les Glaneurs is rigorously structured according to a principle of digression and return. This dialectic is mediated through the theme of gleaning, which serves as a bridge between the film's principal concerns: the requirements of survival and of artistic expression. Varda's technique recalls her previous films such as La Pointe Courte (1956) and Sans toit ni loi (1985) and it is in fact the autobiographical dimension of Les Glaneurs that constitutes its greatest digression from the project of social documentary. Crucially, Varda's visual curiosity allows the film to avoid didacticism or utopianism; it tacitly raises political questions but offers few answers. Les Glaneurs operates within the context of a new political cinema dissatisfied with the post-1968 narrative; however, it is not limited to a single discourse. Les Glaneurs is a plurivocal and broadly humanitarian ‘subjective documentary’ and its over-riding principle is Varda herself.