Jacquot de Nantes

Jacques Demy died in 1990 at the age of 59. It was reported that cancer had been the cause of death, but in 2008, Varda revealed that he had died as a result of HIV/AIDS. A touching farewell from a wife to her husband, Jacquot De Nantes is a delightful depiction of the formative years of a youngster determined to make films when he grows up. Demy’s unfinished memoirs provide the basic material, and, looking far from well, he appears on camera from time to time providing part of the film’s narration. Varda shot the film in Nantes on the exact locations where young Jacquot, as he was called, grew up; in his father’s old gas station, and in the home of the village clog-maker where the boy and his younger brother hid out during the darkest days of World War II. It was here that the boy became fascinated by make-believe at an early age, seeing opera and puppet shows, key French films of the period, and Disney’s Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs.