In an essay discussing this film, titled Jane B. par Agnes V., I felt as though referring to the two women in the title by their last names would be inappropriate and against the naming convention of this movie. With both women’s last names being abbreviated, they effectively remove one of the larger connections that all women have to men: through a patronymic. Though it is typical to refer to the subjects of your writing by their last name, I will refrain from referring to Jane and Agnes by last name in this work.
In 1982, the new wave band Berlin released their second studio album Pleasure Victim, featuring the single “Sex (I’m A)”. The song became both a cult hit and the subject of censorship and an eventual banning on certain radio stations. The song is a duet, sung by John Crawford and Terri Nunn, with a chorus sung by both— I’m sure you can imagine who sings which part:
I’m a man — I’m a goddess
I’m a man — Well, I’m a virgin
I’m a man — I’m a blue movie
I’m a man — I’m a bitch
I’m a man — I’m a geisha
I’m a man — I’m a little girl
And we make love together
Each chorus stays the same for Crawford, but Nunn sings a different set of roles. The song is very obviously about sex, but it reveals something interesting about typical heterosexual role-play: the woman must transform constantly, but all the man has to do is show up.
In her 39th year on this planet, Jane Birkin expressed to her friend Agnes Varda that she was nervous about turning 40. Varda responded by having Jane participate in her own 99 minute portrait. Jane B. par Agnes V. is a stunning “documentary” about one of the most beautiful women in the world looking back on her own life and facing every western woman’s fear of turning 40. At one point early on in the film, Jane B. asks Agnes V. “Which do you want? Real or phony?” The answer: yes. Documentary, while being the closest way to approximate the genre of this work, is perhaps misleading—this film is a collage consisting of true stories, fabricated scenes, artistic tableaux, and breaks in the fourth wall. This is a film that is very difficult to pigeon-hole. A film about Jane B. is a film about physical beauty, whether that was an explicit goal or not. Helen of Troy might’ve had a face that launched a thousand ships, but Jane had a face that inspired the most expensive and sought-after designer handbag in the world. One of the drawbacks of womanhood is that we are not permitted to age the way men do; where they somehow become more attractive with silver hair and wrinkles, we are taught very early on to stop the effects of time dead in their tracks.
“I’m a boy…I’m your mother…I’m a one night stand” sings Terri Nunn in “Sex”’s second chorus (or you could go with the amazing cover of the song by Lovage, sung by Mike Patton and Jennifer Charles, but I digress). The list of women’s myriad roles to fill goes on and on, ad nauseam. Historical texts and works of visual art are primary sources for some of these most enduring archetypes that women contort themselves to fit into. In that way, womanhood is a performance, no matter what your definition of womanhood may be. Jane Birkin portrays many different women here, including herself. We see young Jane, current Jane, Jane as the Venus de Milo on a pillar, Jane as an amalgamation of Laurel/Hardy, Jane as a flamenco dancer, and so much more. Perhaps all these different women exist within her, the same way they exist in different amounts in all of us. One of my very favorite “Jane”: is Jane as Ariadne, famous from ancient Greek mythology. Ariadne falls in love with Theseus and helps him with the impossible task of entering the labyrinth and slaying the Minotaur by giving him a sword and a ball of thread. The sword, obviously given for the purpose of slaughtering the Minotaur, the thread’s purpose a little more esoteric: to help Theseus find his way out of the maze. However, in this version, there is no Theseus, there is no Minotaur. There’s just Ariadne, in a mirrored maze, holding a ball of thread. To the Ancient Greeks, thread was the representation of life itself, the life of each person a thread in the hands of the Three Fates, ready to be cut at random. Throughout the film there are many points in which Jane looks at the camera, or herself, through a mirror: early on in a conversation with Agnes, in the middle of the film when she sings and dances to “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” and here. In a work that is so much about aging, this is an act of defiance. She sees her own reflection, wrinkles, cigarette-stained teeth, weathered skin and all, and still continues to dance. The song itself seems to be a young girl’s song, with Daddy being both literal and a stand-in for a male lover. Youth, as they say, is wasted on the young– and youth is unfortunately sold to women as an attractive ideal, rather than wisdom and experience. “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” is a great song, (though I prefer Julie London’s rendition to Marilyn Monroe’s), but it upholds the sexiness of being a young girl. By singing this song, knowing full well how she looks, she reclaims it for those of us over 30, or whatever age we may be when the world tells us that we’ve “expired.” Jane confronts the viewer by looking directly into camera throughout the film, she speaks to Agnes through mirrors, and she confronts herself and her changing appearance by coming face to face with her own reflection. By holding her own thread in the mirrored maze, she asserts control over her own life and her own image. She does not get lost in her reflection, like the very male Narcissus of Greek mythology. Jane’s portrayal of Ariadne without Theseus changes her role from one of subservience to a man to one of self-assuredness: a privilege which so few women are allowed, whether in the artistic world or the “real” world. Ariadne becomes the femme fatale art dealer from earlier on, with the wounded artist trapped yet again in her web.
Jane portrays another Jane towards the end of the film, as in Tarzan’s love interest. She looks at the camera with a pained expression, stating that she’d rather play Mowgli. Jane, her hair short, says that she “never sees [herself] as a girl,” but in “roles of girls disguised as boys, like Calamity Jane.” From one Jane to another, to another. She transforms into Joan of Arc, complete with a bob, full armor, and atop a horse in front of a city bus on a busy French street. Joan is a woman that many women love, be it for her ability to pull off the “fuck-ass bob” or for her willingness to die for her beliefs in a suit of armor. We see her get sentenced to death, and she burns alive in a bed of flames. She screams and cries. It’s painful, it’s hard to watch, and frankly, it’s unbecoming, which is what makes it so wonderful. Womens’ deaths have become colonized by beauty standards, which is why dying honestly, or grotesquely, is such a defiant act. Think of the painting “Ophelia” by John Everett Millais. In media women are forced to be beautiful at every moment: when we cry, when we fuck, when we’re angry, when we blow our noses. The reality is far from that– I’ve never looked uglier than when my face is entirely puffy after crying, or when my face contorts with pleasure, when my face alights with rage, and when I contract it all to blow my nose. As liberating as it is to live free from the expectation to be gorgeous 24/7, it’s simply not possible, especially in the age of social media. But before everyone had a 4k quality camera in their pocket at all times, it was much easier to police your own image, and to hide from others the true range of your facial expression. To be seen without makeup, to be seen without knowingly achieving one’s standard of perfection was something you could easily control. Women could be gods, shielded from any perception of imperfection. Agnes’ voices comes through then, to direct her dying scene. Throughout this entire movie, we’re reminded of the fact that this is a conversation between two women (who, as far as we know, are not sexually attracted to each other), and that men are an afterthought. Agnes paints a complete picture of a woman, without subjecting her to any outside sexual objectification aside from what Jane chooses to acknowledge and describe in this quasi-autobiography. Even today it’s so rare to see a film this honest about the feminine existence from the perspective of a female director and star/subject. This little vignette made me think of a scene in A Woman Under the Influence, in which Mabel Longhetti (a transcendent Gena Rowlands) has her kids and the neighbor’s kids perform for the neighbor, Mr. Jensen. The children dance naked to music from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, and she begins to instruct them on when and how to “die” for Mr. Jensen. Everything is a performance. We need to perform desirability, coquettishness, strength, wisdom, anger, and so on and so forth, depending on what the moment calls for. We need to be all things, much like the Berlin song alludes to; we need to be a blue movie, a “bi,” a one night stand, a dream to find. One is not simply “being” a woman, but one must prove her womanhood every chance she gets. Even in dying, one must preserve her femininity. I’m certain part of the reason I didn’t watch my grandmother die is because she wasn’t physically able to braid her hair, put on a bra and clip on earrings, or apply her pink lipstick.
I believe Jane’s fear of aging is a much more common, or at least acknowledged phenomenon in 2024 than it was in the mid-late 80s, thanks to the availability of Tretinoin cream, the widespread use of sunscreen, and the commercial viability of $25 dollar smoothies named after beauty influencers. Nonetheless, it was nothing short of awe-inspiring for me to have seen this movie for the first time a few months before my 30th birthday, greeted by the (still extremely beautiful) face of Jane free from surgical intervention, surgery, or any attempt to mask her age. It’s a thing of beauty to see what happens to a face after 40 years of a life well-lived, full of love, loss, alcohol, drugs, and lots and lots of cigarettes.
In the first moments of the film, Jane describes how she can “feel time passing drop by drop, every minute, every second” as she approaches her 40th, and every “even-numbered” milestone. Later on she proclaims that she loves how “time leaves its mark.” By the end of this journey she’s accepted that her 40th birthday is tomorrow, and the cast and crew give her flowers, gifts, and kisses. Together, Agnes and Jane create a beautiful portrait of womanhood, full of our many complications, our fantasies, the roles we feel compelled to fill, and the ways in which our lives become fuller and more beautiful the less we try to fight the inevitability of time.
