WATCHING one highly personal French documentary is just fine.
But sitting through three totally unrelated ones in a row – with all that puzzling (subtitled) dialogue and those long (enigmatic) silences?
That’s a migraine waiting to happen.
It would have been much better if award-winning 78-year-old filmmaker Agnes Varda had released her latest documentary, “Ydessa, the Bears and Etc.,” by itself.
“Ydessa” is a PBS-worthy, 44-minute meditation on Ydessa Hendeles, a Toronto artist who owns what is surely the world’s largest collection of vintage photographs with teddy bears in them.
Varda became intrigued when she saw Hendeles’ collection on display in a Munich gallery – and it truly does look like a fascinating exhibit.
Much of the film is just pictures from the collection, but Varda also visits Hendeles in her 18-room Toronto mansion, where the obsessive collector lives by herself and seems to spend much of her time trolling eBay for more teddy shots.
Unfortunately, Varda has tacked two of her older short films onto “Ydessa,” using the excuse that they also have to do with still photographs.
So, we also get 1982’s “Ulysses,” a mysterious-to-the-point-of-nonsensical 22-minute film about a photo that Varda took in the 1950s of a two bathers and a dead goat on a beach.
Only slightly more interesting is the third film, 1963’s “Salut les Cubains,” a 30-minute slideshow of black-and-white pictures that Varda took on a trip to Cuba soon after Castro’s revolution.
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CINEVARDAPHOTO
[] (Two stars)
Two documentaries too many. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 96 minutes. Not rated (nothing objectionable). At Film Forum, Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue.