Dir: Agnès Varda, 1965, France, French with English subtitles, 80 min, Cert: 15
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Sat 16 May // 19:00
Tickets: £5
Join us after the Spring Fair to welcome the longer warmer days with a screening of Agnès Varda's first film shot in colour, a radiant mosaic of flowers, picnics and sun‑drenched countryside.
The film follows François, a young husband and father who believes he can only increase his happiness by adding more love to his life, a premise Varda uses to probe the fragile boundaries of contentment.
Le Bonheur dazzles with a palette that evokes the French Impressionists, accompanied by Mozart, depicting seemingly blissful scenes of family life. Yet its sunny surface conceals bold questions about happiness, fidelity and the price of contentment.
Varda described imagining the film "like a summer peach with its perfect colours, but inside, there is a worm," Her painterly compositions and warm outdoor tableaux create a world that invites us in, before quietly unsettling us with bold questions about happiness, fidelity and the price of contentment.
A luminous, quietly devastating classic to usher in the summer.