2023 March Madness [Round 1] - Alfonso Cuarón vs. Agnès Varda

Alfonso Cuarón was born in Mexico City to a doctor and pharmaceutical biologist. He studied filmmaking and philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. There he met director Carlos Marcovich and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and made together they made Cuarón’s first short film Vengeance is Mine. Out of college in the 80s he began working in television as a technician and eventually moved up to director.

In 1991 he got his first feature directing job the sex comedy SÓLO CON TU PAREJA starring Daniel Giménez Cacho. The film was a big hit in Mexico and drew the attention to Sydney Pollack, who hired him to direct an episode of the Showtime series Fallen Angels. He then transferred to the Hollywood studio system where he directed an adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A LITTLE PRINCESS and a modern version of GREAT EXPECTATIONS starring Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Robert De Niro.

Somewhat disillusioned by the need to stick to a very standard style of Hollywood filmmaking, Cuarón returned to Mexico to make the coming of age road movie Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN starring Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal in star making roles. The film was a huge success both financially and critically, earning an Oscar nomination for Original Screenplay and BAFTA noms for Screenplay and non-English Film. Next Cuarón was hired to direct HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKHABAN, often considered the best film in the series.

Off of this success Cuarón was given a $76M budget to make the dystopian thriller CHILDREN OF MEN, which was a critical success, earning three Oscar nominations, but did not make back its budget at the box office. He took a hiatus from feature directing to produce films such as Pan’s Labyrinth through his production company Esperanto Filmoj. In 2009 he directed an Autism Speaks PSA that premiered at the United Nations in which autism is heavily demonized.

In 2010 he began work on the visual effects heavy $130M GRAVITY starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. The film was a huge success both critically and financially, making $723.2 and winning seven Oscars including Best Director. Next he got the Netflix check to make ROMA, a film about the life of his childhood maid. It won the Golden Lion at Venice and was nominated for 10 Oscars. Cuarón won for Directing, Cinematography, and Foreign Language Film but lost Best Picture to Green Book. In 2019 he signed a first look TV deal with Apple, production just completed on the first project Disclaimer starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline.

Agnès Varda was born in Belgium in 1928. Her mother was French and her father was a Greek refugee. When she was young her family moved to France where they lived on a boat during World War II. Varda went to Paris to study and found the city “truly excruciating”. She earned a degree in literature and psychology from the Sorbonne although she hated her classes and the institution. She had planned to become a museum curator, but while studying art history she decided she wanted to be a photographer instead. She found work immediately photographing families and events, but found it unfulfilling. In 1951 she was hired by her friend to become the official photographer of the Théâtre National Populaire, where she worked until 1961.

During this period she made her first feature film LA POINTE COURTE, about an unhappy couple trying to work through their issues in a small fishing village. The film was praised by Cahiers du Cinéma critics André Bazin and François Truffaut who saw Varda as an incredibly refreshing voice, not just because she was a woman, but also because most directors working in France had gotten the job by working their way up through film crews, and as a result were often making the same types of movies. While it is not as formally inventive or abrasive as what would come in the following decade, La Pointe Courte has come to largely be considered the first film of the French New Wave. However, the film was not a financial success, and Varda spent the rest of the decade making short films, many of which were documentaries.

Her next feature CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7, a real time account of a woman’s afternoon as she awaits cancer tests results, was her only film to premiere in competition at Cannes (although many of her films premiered out of competition). The film was received well upon release, and has come to be known as one of the masterpieces of the early New Wave. It is the third highest rated film on the current Sight & Sound Critics List behind Jenanne Dielman and Beau travail. The same year she married fellow director Jacques Demy. LE BONHEUR won the Jury Grand Prix at Berlinale.

While Varda was caring for her young son she made her first feature documentary DAGUÉRROTYPES featuring vignettes of people who lived on her street. Over the next two decades she shifted between narrative and documentary films, most obviously in 1981 with MUR MURS, a documentary about muralists, and DOCUMENTEUR, a narrative film about a filmmaker directing a documentary about muralists. Her narrative feature VAGABOND won the Golden Lion at Venice, where it was lauded for its nonlinear storytelling and feminist lens. After Demy died in 1990, Varda made JACQUOT DE NANTES, based on his early life while also including interludes of Demy’s movies and footage of him dying.

After arguably her biggest blank check, the star studded fantasy comedy ONE HUNDRED AND ONE NIGHTS, flopped she never made a narrative feature again. Instead, she swerved to become one of the most prolific and highly lauded documentarians of all time. THE GLEANERS AND I, about people who harvest leftover crops from commercial farmlands, is often considered one of the best films of this century. Her joyous FACES PLACES was given a Golden Eye award at Cannes and was nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar.

Over time Varda came to be celebrated as one the greatest filmmakers of all time. In 2015 she was awarded an Honorary Golden Palm at Cannes. In 2018 she was the first female director ever given an Honorary Oscar. Varda died from cancer in 2019 at the age of 90.

Obviously these are only the narrative films for Varda so that the list matches the 11 films listed on the website. Documentaries would need to be covered in some way as it honestly would make more sense to cover her purely with docs than purely with narrative features.

Varda earned an Honorable Mention for Putters and Murmurs for her on screen appearance in her documentary Faces Places. The film was also one of David’s Best Documentaries of the Decade.

This is Cuarón’s fourth time on the bracket. In 2018 he lost to Robert Altman in the first round. In 2020 he defeated David Lean then lost to eventual winner Robert Zemeckis in the Sweet 16. He was Emily Yoshida’s pick for the 2021 guest region, where he beat Kelly Reichardt and Jackie Chan before losing to Gore Verbinski in the Elite 8. Logic therefore concludes he will lose this year in the Final 4.