'Varda by Agnès' is a great director's final masterclass, capturing the humanity and sweat of her films

If all my professors were as knowledgeable, as caring, and as fun as Agnès Varda — as demonstrated in her final film, the self-reflective documentary “Varda by Agnès” — I wouldn’t have skipped class so often.

Shot shortly before her death last March at the age of 90 — and shown on French TV as a two-episode miniseries — this lively documentary is set up like a masterclass. Varda sits on a stage in a grand opera house, talking to her audience about how she made her films, working roughly in chronological order.

Varda begins with her 1954 debut, the rough-and-tumble “La Pointe Courte,” and her early masterpiece “Clèo From 5 to 7” (1961), a semi-improvised slice of life of a self-involved pop singer (Corinne Marchand) wandering the Rue Daguerre — the street where Varda lived — while waiting for the results of a cancer test. Varda talks about how she structured the film so Clèo would sing a song at the movie’s exact midpoint, and everything before and after would radiate from that moment.

The class doesn’t stay in the opera house, though. When talking about her 1985 drama “Vagabond,” about a teen girl, played by Sandrine Bonnaire, walking across the French countryside, Varda is suddenly outside, sitting on a camera dolly similar to the one she used in the film for its trademark tracking shots. A minute later, Bonnaire, who’s now 52 and a big star in France, is on the dolly with Varda, reminiscing about the shoot.

The first half of the film covers Varda’s work in the 20th century, and the second half her work in the 21st, with a diversion to talk about her photography and exhibition work as an intermission. The turning point for Varda was her 2000 documentary “The Gleaners and I,” in which she followed people who made their living picking up what others threw away — whether in potato fields in the country or the dumpsters of Paris. Varda’s camera mirrors its subjects, considering the value of people that others would ignore.

For fans of Varda or those unfamiliar with Varda’s work — from her early standing as “the godmother of the French New Wave,” in the same circles as Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Demy (her husband until his death in 1990), to her end-of-career rediscovery partnering with street artist JR in “Faces Places” — “Varda by Agnès” is an eye-opening look at an artist dissecting her works and revealing the threads that connect them. Watch it, then make time to binge-watch her earlier films.

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‘Varda by Agnès’

★★★1/2

Opened November 20, 2019, in select cities; opens Friday, January 17, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably R for some nudity and sexual content. Running time: 115 minutes; in French with subtitles.