Agnès Varda's Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (2008)

'The  Gleaners and I'! I'm aware that I have almost an obsession with translations, but wow is that a bad one. The suggestion in English is of opposition: gleaners against a single person, whereas the French links a number of people and one individual doing the same thing. It's best to largely ignore the distinction made in this film between a glaneur and a grappilleur – in  other words someone who picks something up from the ground contrary to a height (say, potatoes versus grapes on the vine) – although it's nevertheless an interesting one. And although glaner, like 'glean', can have a literal and a figurative sense, isn't 'glean' used far more figuratively in English?

'We're going gleaning.' No, I don't like it. 'We're going scrumping.' I like it, but it doesn't quite fit because it has a suggestion of schoolkid misbehaviour, and anyway does anyone use the word anymore? 'Scavenging'? Again, there's a slightly dodgy suggestion that isn't present in 'glean'. So glean it must be?

I'm digressing hugely because I've strayed from Varda's film, which a number of people seem to think is her best, or one of her best. Well, it's certainly extremely interesting, concerns a very contemporary theme (waste), but surely most people just find some of her other films too difficult for consumption?

Les Glaneurs et les glaneuses is episodic, a collection of instances of, er, gleaning. We have, for example, people collecting potatoes that have been rejected because too big or too small, too misshapen or cut, etc; we have the collection of grapes rejected or missed during the vendenge; we have people collecting oysters; we have a secondhand goods shop; and we have a visit to Bohdan Litnianski and his brut art  in the Jardin des Merveilles in Viry-Noureuil (Aisne), which of course should be gleaning information, but the Litnianskis didn't seem too forthcoming in their explanations.

This DVD includes an hour-long film two years on from this movie, in which not everyone is any longer there or in the same place, partly because of death, partly because of move of home, etc. Perhaps the most interesting things are the responses Varda received as a result of people seeing this film, particularly as a result of it being shown on television. A terrifying thing: one member of a trailer park had found a boyfriend and drank less now, whereas she used to drink 'a lot'. Varda asks: 'What is a lot?' 'Ten or fifteen litres a day'. 'Of what?' 'Rosé.' Erm...