Agnes Varda’s 1955 film premiere La Pointe Courte follows a Parisian husband and wife who retreat to a small costal village to sort out their marital problems. Throughout the film the simple daily life and mortal struggles on La Point Courte are shown with fly- on- the- wall realism; we see the fishermen’s unending controversy with the law, we see the death of a small child, we see family feuds, etc. All of the neo realism throughout is starkly contrasted by the scripted melodrama of the couple (which is, according to Varda, intended to sound flat and scripted).
La Pointe Courte, is often credited for pioneering the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s. Her combined use of realism and traditional narrative in this film would later become characteristic of the movement in general. Varda’s choice to use visible/stylistic editing in the scenes with the couple (visible or jarring editing styles again being typical of New Wave), and a raw style in the village scenes helps to convey the crisis of the couple and their lack of empathy or connectedness to the flow of reality. Eventually the couple is stylistically integrated into the reality of the film when they relieve marital tensions and "fall in love" again. Varda seems to be making a comment about urban life vs. rural life in the film as well, as the couple is stripped of their upper-crusty comforts on La Pointe Courte. The village seems to function as a symbolic place, a sanctuary of unfettered human experience, a place beyond the grasp Parisian self-consciousness.
Reference:http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/497-la-pointe-courte-how-agnes-varda-invented-the-new-wave
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