Jacques Demy aside, all of Varda’s main themes, motifs and preoccupations are present in Ulysse, arguably one the director’s greatest works, despite its short run time. A miniature of oceanic emotional effect, the film is an investigation of a still photograph that Varda took in 1954, while shooting her groundbreaking first feature, La Pointe courte, in 1954, of a nude man standing before the sea on a pebbled beach; it shows a young boy (Ulysse) seated next to him and, in the foreground, the corpse of a goat (“un sujet en or”). Poignant and heartwarming, the film is structured like a photo-montage as Varda pieces together the fragments of the photograph nearly thirty years later, reuniting with her subjects in an in-between space where image, memory and myth coalesce. Winner of the César award—the French equivalent of the Oscar—for best short film.

Rated PG