Review: Restored ‘Jane B.’ and ‘Kung-Fu Master!’ offer a study in groundbreaking feminist filmmaking

Cinelicious Pics is presenting a restoration of two films created in collaboration between French New Wave grand dame Agnès Varda and 1960s actress and singer Jane Birkin. Filmed in 1987 and 1988, these films explore the passage of time, aging, creativity and motherhood in wholly original ways that feel progressive nearly 30 years later.

“Jane B. par Agnès V.” and “Kung-Fu Master!” blur the line between reality and fiction — the former more of a documentary, the latter a narrative feature, based off a story written by Birkin.

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“Jane B. par Agnès V.” is a nonfiction film that explores the tension in Birkin’s roles as both muse and artist. Birkin, known best for her work with longtime partner Serge Gainsbourg (who makes a brief appearance), offers a way to dive into this relationship. The film mixes conversations between the women with Jane at home, reminiscing about her life, memories, dreams and children. These set the basis for a series of staged scenarios in different styles from cinema and art history: a Laurel and Hardy routine, a lover’s squabble performed with Jean-Pierre Léaud. In staged Renaissance painting tableaux, Jane ruminates on different topics, including her birthday. Declaring “beauty is irritating,” Varda questions the construct of beauty, offering a voice to the subjects of art.

Varda pushes Birkin to reconcile her simultaneous desires for fame and anonymity. Mystery creates objects of fantasy, and Varda wants to make transparent the process of being seen and being known. As director, she interrogates the role of the camera itself, and she seeks to empower the subject of the camera’s gaze. The film addresses its own role in creating this portrait of Jane, revealing the camera lens as a participant. This partnership between director and subject allows for a complicated and humanizing portrayal of an icon that takes on nostalgia, fame, identity and the nature of cinema itself.

In “Jane B. par Agnès V.” the women discuss the other film from their creative union, “Kung-Fu Master!” In that movie, an older woman, Mary-Jane, falls in love with a teenage boy. Again mixing reality and fiction, Birkin’s children Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon play her daughters, and Varda’s son, Mathieu Demy, plays the boy. The title refers to a video game over which they bond, which emphasizes the boy’s youth. Their relationship is at once maternal and romantic, and the film is emblematic of truly bold and risky feminine filmmaking. Complicating matters, Mary-Jane has to teach her teenage daughter — a sweet and slightly awkward Gainsbourg — how to navigate love and sex against the backdrop of the late-1980s AIDS crisis.

The restoration of the films is lush and warm and feels true to Varda’s style, capturing Birkin, and Paris, during this specific time. However, the real reason to see this work is to experience groundbreaking feminist filmmaking from two people who were ahead of their time in exploring modern ideas about women as mothers, artists and individuals.

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“Jane B. par Agnes V”

No MPAA rating

Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

“Kung-Fu Master!”

No MPAA rating.

Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle’s Royal, West L.A.

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