One of the most remarkable documentaries ever made, taking that tedious grey manly genre obsessed with 'serious' subjects and 'truth', and throwing buckets of day-glo paint at it. Influenced by Vigo's A PROPOS DE NICE, it concerns the history and profuseness of French coastal resorts. It is satiric and ironic, although its method is a cool Surrealism. Varda is a lot more sympathetic to the sensual pleasures of resorts, the colours, the costumes, building, the unreality of nature, even as she shows the dehumanising of tourists. There is a wistful nostalgia allied with a barely suppressed fury at the exclusivity of these Edens. Like in Vigo, the trip to a resort is a kind of death, a denial of life. Anyone who loves LE MEPRIS should see this.
