La Pointe Courte is a 1955 French drama film directed by Agnès Varda. This feature film was Varda's debut. It has been cited by many critics as a forerunner of the French New Wave, with the historian Georges Sadoul calling it "truly the first film of the nouvelle vague". The film takes place in Sète in the south of France. The Pointe Courte is a tiny quarter of the town known as the fisherman's village.
Plot
A young man arrives at a train station to see his wife. After four years of marriage, the couple is having problems of a somewhat existential nature—the wife loves her husband, but is thinking of leaving him. The couple discuss their lives and become resigned to the fact that they belong together, even if their love has changed. They return to Paris, the wife now better understanding her husband's nature because she's seen his hometown. As this drama unfolds, we see the lives of the poor but proud people living there: fishermen wanting to harvest shellfish from a small lagoon they have been forbidden to use because of an alleged problem with bacteria; a small child dies of an unknown illness; a young man wins the right to court the 16-year-old daughter of a neighbor after proving himself in a local aquatic jousting tournament.
Production
Varda originally visited La Pointe Courte to take pictures for a friend who could no longer visit her home. After seeing the footage she took there, she rented a camera to shoot a film about a couple from Paris who were visiting La Pointe Courte, the husband's home town. Varda set up her own co-op and began production. The budget for the film was $14,000; roughly one quarter the budget of other feature films of the era including The 400 Blows and Breathless. No members of the cast or crew were paid during the production.
Themes
In a 1962 interview, Varda spoke of two present themes in the film with "the first being a couple reconsidering their relationship and a village that is trying to resolve several collective problems of survival". In her movieLes plages d'Agnès, Varda says her film was inspired by William Faulkner's The Wild Palms.
