A fantastic season of Documentary Now! ends by paying tribute to a master

Before we indulge in any real critique of “Trouver Frisson,” the fourth-season finale of Documentary Now!, can we just take a second? Reflect, on what a profoundly strange and precious show this is? Sincerely: How amazing is it, in the year of our lord 2022, to have one of our various corporate content overlords spend some not-insignificant portion of their coffers to allow a crew of comedy filmmakers to create a half-hour of TV like this, an extended homage, loving and funny, to a filmmaker like Agnès Varda—and then for it to run on regular-ass cable, surrounded by reruns of Scrubs, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Three’s Company? It’s a miracle, a magical dose of strangeness in an otherwise prosaic world, and anything I end up saying here about the overall quality of the episode, minor complaints about some joke or philosophical aim, can’t detract from that simple reality. I am glad that Documentary Now! exists, more than almost any other show on the air, and episodes like “Trouver Frisson” are a prime example of why.

Now, to business: Our Varda stand-in tonight is French actress Liliane Rovère, playing acclaimed French New Wave pioneer Ida Leos. Leos, an acclaimed veteran now forced to weather the indignity of being called “adorable” by condescending children, is less a parody of Varda, with her mischievousness, melancholy, and paradoxically honest love for artificiality, than she is simply a straight recreation. (Even as Rovère’s performance charts out a slightly more ambivalent, individualistic take on the character.)

And that, not to give the game away too early, is probably the worst thing you can say about “Trouver Frisson.” Like this season’s “Two Hairdressers In Bagglyport,” we’re observing Documentary Now! in imitation mode tonight. Rather than offering up any more pointed critique of films like The Gleaners And I or The Beaches Of Agnès, writers Matt Pacult and Tamsin Rawady, and co-directors Alex Buono and Micah Gardner, instead attempt to create a version of the basic vibe of these films that’s a bit sillier, and a bit more whimsical, than the originals—a decidedly tricky goal when you’re dealing with a filmmaker as comfortable with whimsy and silliness as Varda.

There are a few moments here, true, that paint Leos as a more destructive figure than her inspiration, as when she attempts to break in to her childhood home in search of her lost “frisson.” (A quest for goosebumps that’s not notably more whimsical than the sorts of things Varda’s late-life documentaries are about.) But all involved are so enamored of that playfully inquisitive tone that they can’t help but keep Leos as a benign and loving figure, eventually embracing her ability to bring joy to others. (At least, until that very funny ending, when it’s revealed that she’s not suffering from late-life ennui, but exposure to black mold.) Without that willingness to take a swing or two, “Trouver Frisson” can never aspire to be about more much than the delightfulness of Agnès Varda, and the creators’ appreciation for same.

Which is, thankfully, in abundance, and captured beautifully. This is probably tied with the season premiere for the best-looking episode of Documentary Now!’s fourth season, full of beautiful shots of the countryside, authentic camera aesthetics, and a taste for big, absurd images that’s appropriately Varda-esque. (The shot of Ida recreating a condescending head-pat from a much younger actor, now with a giant hand pressing on her head, got used in the show’s promotional materials this year for the pretty obvious reason that it’s great.)

Our most energetic sequence comes as Leos travels to the actual town of Frisson, presented as a tourist haven where the locals all want to give you goosebumps—whether with a magic show, some talented butchery, or a bit of faux-anonymous sex. (With all due respect to the erotic role-play, though, the most convincing thrill-seeker is Documentary Now! return performer Gary Kraus, as an American Midwestern butcher who fits right in with the locals.) “Trouver Frisson” is at its most fun when it’s tapping into the joy of others, allowing them to give straight-faced monologues about the absurd things that bring them happiness—something the episode itself acknowledges by having Jean-Paul the mold removal guy inspire Ida’s idea for her documentary’s ending, by describing the happiness he gets from fixing people’s homes. She does the same, literally bringing Frisson to the residents of a retirement home where one of her old collaborators now spends his days “staring at a cinder-block wall.”

And, really: Why not? We are, after all, here together talking about a show that’s all about creating something beautiful and absurd, week in and week out, improbable experiments and exercises with little reason to exist beyond “We thought it’d be fun to do.” Buono and Gardner even get to do their own version of a French New Wave bank robbery, homaging Jean-Luc Godard, and Varda’s husband, Jacques Demy, with a pair of silly, lovely dance sequences. (One in the present, and one in glorious black and white). You could make the argument that Documentary Now! is always imitating a bit of Varda’s spirit, every time it tries to replicate Herzog or the Maysles or Demme, that playful blurring of the real and the unreal. “Trouver Frisson” simply makes that debt a bit more literal; in the process, it generates a lot of very pleasant laughs—and creates something it wouldn’t be hard to imagine Varda herself getting a kick out of, in the end.

Stray observations

• Tonight, in Shit My Helen Mirren says: “What does one do when one loses one’s spark? One’s oomph? One’s joi de vivre?” Dame Helen takes a bite out of that last one.
• This version of the Arte France Cinema production logo comes with 100 percent more cat butthole.
• “The skin is the wallpaper of the body, and the wallpaper is the skin of the wall. This metaphor is so circular that to say it aloud is to waste your time.” This is about as close as the episode gets to genuinely making fun of Varda—the issue being that she was also perfectly self aware about how that kind of sentiment could sound.
• I didn’t touch much on Rovère up above, but she’s perfectly convincing here as a very lived-in version of this character. Documentary Now! is mostly very good at avoiding cariacature, even when someone is very clearly based on a real person, and Rovère nails the necessary verisimilitude.
• The woman playing the long-suffering wife of the duck guy does a lot with a handful of lines, too.
• The accordion cover of “Master Of Puppets” from the metal-loving accordion guy is a nice touch. (That is Metallica, right? I have a terrible ear for songs.)
• In many ways, a perfect ending: There’s a heavy dollop of sweetness, bordering on saccharine, as Leos brings frisson to the people—and then the abrupt cut to the black mold reveal, followed by her cutting a rug to some French rap.
• And that’s a wrap on this season of Documentary Now!, folks. An exceptional and strange journey, and one I’ve been happy to make alongside y’all.