The Creatures

A hermetic work, where fantasy and reality mix, in a surreal universe of a writer, locked in a strange beach house, almost a fortress, with his pregnant wife, while writing a literary work.

Both suffer injuries from a road accident. He has a deep feeling of guilt, marked by a scar on his forehead, which symbolizes a healthy madness, which he channels into literary creation. She, a loving muteness, the reverse of her husband's guilt, which she only overcomes at the end, with the birth of her son.

Meanwhile, like a demiurge of the small world that surrounds him, he plays the luck and destiny of his characters and of his own life and family.

Of course, with all the hermetic surrealism that dominates the film, everything could mean something completely different to other viewers.

It is certainly not Varda's most representative cinematographic language, nor is it her most inspired or influential film.

..the others will think it merely arty.Like so many nouvelle vague artists,Agnès Varda tries hard here to say something "deep" "meaningful" and "of consequence".

All Varda's qualities seem to have vanished into thin air:spontaneity,simplicity and sensitiveness,which made her beautiful "Cleo de 5 à 7" so worthwhile and so new at the beginning of the sixties.These qualities seemed to remain in the follow-up "le bonheur",but this latter work is rather unpleasant in several respects.(Mrs Alice Liddell wrote a very good IMDb comment for "le bonheur",read it and you'll know what I mean)

In "les creatures" Varda casts Piccoli as a writer and Deneuve his mute (because of an accident)wife .The other characters are all pawns in a giant chess game.Sometimes the screen turns red ,maybe to indicate that it's not the same "player",who knows?Actually this is the kind of movie which defies analysis.

It was the eighties before Agnès Varda was again in clover with "sans toit ni loi" and "Jacquot de Nantes".

In this totally senseless pseudo-sci-fi film, Catherine Deveuve is mute for 95% of the time; as if to compensate, her husband Michel Piccoli (playing a character named Piccoli - how profound) can talk to animals! Shot in black-and-white, the film uses a red monochrome every time someone does something weird - which happens a lot. It also has an incessantly piercing violin score. One of those art films which drive people away from art films. 0.5 out of 4 stars.

It loses its steam in the second half. I mean, first 40 minutes are almost great, this looked like a Kafkaesque nightmare, totally bizarre but not entirely incomprehensible. I was making my own interpretations and i was carried away due to its creepiness/weirdness etc. However, the second half was not on the same level. I can't say i loved the whole segment with the guy on the tower. It got a bit tiring i think. Still, this is a good surreal drama/fantasy movie with great acting performances. Piccoli is imposing, he commands the screen. Furthermore, it was interesting all the way, it didn't drag and i was very curious to see where it goes.

If you like art/weird movies, you will like it as well. Still, it's not a masterpiece.

Plays with fiction and non-fiction and places all of us at the whim of an embittered game of fate in the hands of the author. An intriguing entry into the sci-fi genre with surreal elements that seemed to be about the relationship between a man and woman but told through the other film's characters rather than directly.

The woman is initially ignored by her husband and this leads to a serious accident early in the film. The abstract tale shows her regaining her voice and role in the relationship through a game of people chess through which her author husband learns about relationships and love.