Agnès Varda's Jacquot de Nantes (1991)

Jacquot de Nantes is Agnès Varda's tribute to her husband, the film director Jacques Demy, who was known as 'Jacquot' in his childhood. He grew up in Nantes, and in the film we see three different versions of children playing him as we go from pre-war, through the war to Jacquot becoming Jacques at the end as he moves to the bright lights of film school in Paris.

The film is mainly in black and white to match the period, although it reverts to colour during epiphanic moments, or shots where Demy's colour films excepts are shown, or when the camera dwells in close-ups of Demy's dying body: he was initially said (according to his wishes) to have died of cancer, although he died of AIDS.* There are brief scenes from such films as Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, La Peau d'âne, Le Joueur de flûte, and the amazing mid-19th century shopping centre, Le Passage Pommeraye in Nantes, from Lola, etc.

Demy was brought up around his car mechanic father's garage, and although his father wants his son to follow him professionally Jacquot is obsessed with the cimema, constructing brief movies with his camera: the original Garage Demy in L'allée des tanneurs was used in the shooting, and Varda was thrilled that some of Demy's original films from his youth were found there so many years after.

The originality of Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg partly lies in the fact that the film is entirely related in song, and Jacquot de Nantes is full of songs sung by a number of the characters, and songs are a frequent backcloth to the action, notably Charles Trenet singing 'Le Temps des cerises' as a perceived song of revolt during the war. Varda made a remarkable tribute to her husband.

*Inevitably Jacques Demy's films have, since 2008, been researched for homosexual motifs, which Varda dismissed as 'un ruisseau dans un fleuve'.