On the Eve of My Mother's Birthday, I Consider

In which I’ve been watching some French films & considering time travel

 “I get so nostalgic for you sometimes” — Julie Byrne

Pt. 1 — Agnès

“A beautiful summer fruit with a worm inside,” so Agnès Varda described her film, LE BONHEUR, and I’m obsessed with the concept, and Agnès, too, or at least I am this week, having watched CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7, LE BONHEUR, and VAGABOND in rather rapid succession over the course of a few days. 

I’m bouncing between this new fixation and my other recent project that also might border on obsession: a deep dive into THE X-FILES. I’m not sure whether to call it a watch, or a re-watch, honestly, as the show isn’t exactly new to me — to this day, my father still has it all on VHS tapes in his garage — but for the most part, on Sunday nights at 9pm in the early- to mid-90s, I was heading to bed, not considering the truth, and if it was out there. I was 9 years old when the show first aired, after all.

Anyway, the point is, I had watched about 13 episodes of THE X-FILES in a span of less than a week and it was making my dreams even wackier than usual, so I thought I’d finally watch this French movie that had been in my Criterion queue for some time, CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7. 

I’m not here to give you a movie review or tell you all about the late, great Agnès Varda, as you’re obviously better served by going elsewhere for that. (For instance: here.) But what I wanted to say was I can’t stop thinking about how beautiful, and terrifying, all three of these movies are. Yes, the beautiful people on screen assist in this – Corinne Marchand is so stunning in certain shots as Cléo that it almost hurt, looking at her. I hadn’t felt like this since the first moment Brad Pitt graced the screen as Tristan in LEGENDS OF THE FALL – I’m over here gaping at my TV screen at Cléo just like Julia Ormond as Susannah looks at him in that scene. 

“Is beauty important?” Susan Sontag wrote. “Maybe, sometimes, it’s boring. Maybe what’s more important is ‘the interesting’— everything that’s interesting eventually seems beautiful.”

Sure, yeah, whatever, of course. But in this case, right now, I’m here to say that beauty is important, and interesting, and terrifying, and I’m not bored in the slightest.

Aside from all these very good looking French people, every shot is like my new favorite photograph. Take LE BONHEUR, my new favorite horror film. Mozart and flowers have never been scarier. Happiness, how terrifying.

There are so many flowers. Breathtaking, beautiful flowers and bouquets are everywhere.  Agnès is smacking us in the face with beauty. Like CLÉO, every shot, beautiful — and so, too, is Jean-Claude Drouot as François, breathtakingly beautiful and in my view, so very very stupid and fucking selfish — but that’s up to you to decide, I guess. Back to the flowers: did I mention they’re everywhere? So much so that when Thérèse — who, surprise, is also beautiful, so much so that she’s basically a flower in human form — tries to hand over a bouquet of freshly plucked wildflowers to a family member, they’re dismissed promptly, and with no fanfare. “No, I have plenty,” is the response, or something to that effect.

Fuck your flowers. Fuck your bouquet. Who is this lady, Susan Sontag? I laughed, loudly. 

In French, VAGABOND is called Sans toit ni loi, which means “with neither shelter nor law” & I’m not spoiling it by telling you Mona, the main character, dies. She’s dead right at the opening, frozen and alone. God, Mona is awful — she’s selfish and gets in her own way completely, not in the same way as François in LE BONHEUR  at all — but — but — watching these movies back to back I couldn’t sleep! I just kept thinking about how fucking brilliant Agnès Varda was!

Isn’t it amazing, to discover something new to you that’s not new whatsoever? I’m definitely going to be thinking about Agnès, and how she clearly cared so deeply to demonstrate how women are seen by — and see — the world, when I go see BARBIE later this month.

You might be wondering what any of this has to do with it being the eve of my mother’s birthday. It has nothing and everything to do with it, because I have no idea if my mother ever watched French films or knew or cared about Agnès Varda, but I’d like to think, that if she were actually here to turn 72 tomorrow, we’d have one hell of a conversation about it. And I know with complete certainty she’d remember how goddamn beautiful Brad Pitt was as Tristan, and she’d use it as an opportunity to remind me that Robert Redford was — is — even better looking. Just like she used to.

Pt. 2 — time travel 

You have to understand
I am longing for something that doesn’t exist.

I could go crazy with this wanting —

So, I do not want to talk about that, I don’t want to talk at all, 
because the person I long to talk to is gone. It’s been a lifetime
since I was mothered
& I’m not in the mood for a second-rate attempt.

I intended this to be joyous —
but once again it’s turning sad. 
But don’t fear it — really,
I don’t, anyway, because I know this much, 
that “behind the clouds, there was always the sky.”

(I always steal the best lines from someone else.)

When I’d talk about the things I missed, I’d end up feeling 
guilty about making someone else sad:
The way I’d follow the oxygen cord through the house to the room she was in
& we talked about everything,
 because I was a different person, 
then 

So now I do not want to talk about it, 
I want to fall asleep reading a book tonight, 
and if I’m lucky, I’ll dream a dream of a favorite memory, 
reading side-by-side on the beach with you, your chair close enough
that I barely have to reach out my arm to touch yours. Until then, I’m left 
time traveling – 

Considering this picture of me where your chair next to me is empty, 
but your favorite beach towel with the sailboats is draped on it; 
You’re coming right back. You are taking my photo.
I am 39, and you are turning 72.
If only — 
for once, not missing my mother in the heat of July. 

Pt. 3 — darling, darling, darling 

“This was late summer after Rexanna was born” Grandma texts me back last night, after I sent the photo of her I’d nearly missed, tucked behind another one of her in the little album she’d given me last fall. 

In it, she’s leaning against a picnic table, hands gently clasped. Her chin is tilted in a way that reminds me of all of us at once.

Grandma, Mom, Me
Patricia, Rexanna, Alison

“I love it!” I text Grandma back. 

“And I love you
Darling daughter of my darling daughter.”