This last visit was especially cinematic. We discovered a great second-hand film book store right next to the Cinema du Panthéon, where I bought a book of interviews with Alice Rohrwacher and where the proprietor told us that the cinema had a somewhat hidden tea room upstairs. According to him it had been decorated by none other than Catherine Deneuve. It was, in any case, pretty much deserted, and filled with even more film books. I even saw a real Golden Globes for the first time (though ironically not one … oh wait, I’m not supposed to say.)

Anderson vs. Varda

And the highlights of our visit were two exhibitions: the Wes Anderson one at the Cinémathèque Française, on one of its last days, and “De ci, de là” at the Carnavalet, focusing on Agnès Varda’s Paris.

It probably would never have occurred to me to compare the two filmmakers. Still, different as they are, some parallels became apparent. Both are cultural magpies. Or, to put it less loftily: you could tell they both love(d) stuff. As anyone who ever visited my home can attest: I can relate. I’ve never understood minimalists: few things give me as much joy as my overflowing bookcase, my blu-ray collection (my partner is building me new shelving soon!), my yarn stash, my carefully sorted Lego bricks. They are permanently in need of sorting and weeding, but there’s something comforting to me about having piles of magazines and coffee table books within reach (including, right now, the catalog of the Anderson exhibition).

Part of the Varda exhibition shows the living/working space she had on the Rue Daguerre – not ideal for parking, perhaps, but delightfully full of random stuff (and people). She photographed people in front of a set of big wings. And her “drôle de gueule” series finds weird faces in random assortments of objects.
Anderson, according to the catalog, has been keeping stuff from his movies from the beginning of his career. Obsessively catalogued and carefully preserved. An archive – but what is an archive but a hoard with labels? And his movies, too, seem conjured up from objects. You can tell there were cherished children’s books that in inspired the fake ones from Moonrise Kingdom. The French Dispatch doesn’t happen without piles of issues of The New Yorker. The shoe boxes from The Phoenician Scheme are apparently based on his father-in-laws organizing system, but I bet Wes also has interesting things hidden in the attic.

Astaire vs. Kelly

At the same time, the differences between the two directors were evident. I was reminded of the old cliché about Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire: I can’t find a precise quote right now, but the gist of it is that Fred Astaire makes dancing look effortless, natural, airy, while Gene Kelly’s dancing is athletic and muscular, more overtly impressive. Astaire makes it look easy; Kelly emphasizes that it’s hard.

Wes Anderson is Gene Kelly in this analogy. Every inch of every frame is composed, designed, fussed over – and you can tell. In the exhibition, the focus was also on the details. How beautifully the costumes are designed and tailored. Every carefully positioned hair on the Fantastic Mr. Fox puppets, which were made at different scales to allow for different zoom levels. Endless storyboards, showing how carefully the blocking is planned.

Varda’s films don’t look as carefully composed. Many parts seem like happy accidents, requiring little more than an observant eye. But the Varda exhibition opened with a full page of notes, trying to find words containing other words – the word play she sprinkles into her movies didn’t just occur to her in the moment. There was also a set of two photos: one of her taking a photograph at the Place des Vosges, and a result of that photoshoot, showing a cute cat in that same corner. But look closer, and you notice that the table on which the cat sits in the eventual photo was not in that spot originally. The photo may not look carefully arranged, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t. Just like Astaire: it takes a lot of effort to make things look so easy.

There is another difference between the two exhibitions, however. Anderson is clearly happy to show us just how much work goes into each of his films. But add all the rooms together, and everything starts to feel… overdetermined? Which is to say: there is effort in getting to the end result, but the end result is never really in doubt. From the very first sketch, everything is building to the movies we know and love. There is very little evidence of failure, of hesitation; of roads not taken or loose threads.

The Varda exhibition, on the other hand, conjured a woman who was always trying things, always finding things. She probably had ten times as many failed or abandoned projects as finished ones*. Now, Varda died in 2019; Anderson was involved in putting together his exhibition. It’s possible he didn’t want to show us any of his unfinished work or aborted attempts because they may still become films. But as a result, the Anderson exhibition is as hermetic as his films have been accused of being. The Varda one was more inspiring, to me, because it shows art is as much a process as it is a destination.

*relatable