"A beautiful and disturbing 1965 feature by Agnès Varda about family happiness, full of lingering and creepy ambiguities... Provocative and lovely to look at, this is one of Varda’s best and most interesting features. – Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader
"… like nothing else: a horror movie wrapped up in sunflowers, an excoriating feminist diatribe strummed to the tune of a love ballad. It’s one of the most terrifying films I’ve ever seen - Jenny Chamarette
"The idea is extraordinary: one love is worth the same as another, a person can be replaced by another. For me, LE BONHEUR is the most anti-romantic film there is.
– Chantal Akerman
Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse (Claire Drouot), young husband and father François (Jean-Claude Drouot) finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Agnès Varda's most provocative films, LE BONHEUR examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world.
Awards & Nominations
1965 Berlinale - Silver Bear
Ages of Agnès | May 2–27, 2026
In a career spanning seven decades, artist and filmmaker Agnès Varda crafted an unparalleled canon of formally innovative and poetic films. Considered a progenitor of the French New Wave, her shape-shifting films often employ a hybrid of documentary and fictional narrative approaches and prioritize women’s stories and perspectives. The six films in Ages of Agnès, each from a different decade, chart Varda’s groundbreaking career and celebrate her compelling and charismatic style of filmmaking.
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu