This collection of short works finds Varda observing people, places, and spaces from France to Iran. In L’opéra-Mouffe she evokes the “imaginative world of pregnancy” with a dreamlike montage that combines poetic imagery with documentary portraits shot in the gritty neighborhood of rue Mouffetard. Capturing azure waters and lobster-skinned tourists in the saturated hues of a vacation slide, the jaunty, witty Du côté de la côte celebrates the beauty and absurdity of the Côte d’Azur. La réponse de femmes is a feminist “ciné-tract,” a series of frontal tableaux in response to the question “What does it mean to be a woman?” In Plaisir d’amour en Iran, filmed in Isfahan, Iran, Varda considers the relationship between eros and architecture, sacred and profane. For Ulysse she interviews the subjects of a photograph she took nearly three decades earlier. And with Les dites cariatides Varda contemplates the sculpted women who support doorways and lintels along the streets of Paris, invoking Baudelaire’s “dream of stone.”

— Juliet Clark