Film Review: Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse

Gleaning is, by definition, to “gather (leftover grain) after a harvest,” but French director Agnès Varda’s documentary, Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (2000), more profoundly analyzes the variety of situations in which people salvage what society discards. Be it the gleaners who collect the grapes from a vineyard following the harvest, or the artist who repurposes abandoned materials, one thing consistently holds true: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

While the cinematography of the documentary is akin to that of a high school project on a digital camera, this only emphasizes the intimacy and humanity within Varda’s film. While Varda takes a hiatus from the story to explore the dancing of her camera lens as she forgot to turn her camera off, Varda explores not only the profoundly human stories of her subjects, but also of herself. She consistently presents a raw analysis of her own life, even noting how her aging hands are indicative of the years she’s lived. She is a sincere documentarian, mirroring the rawness of issues like poverty, marginalization, and food scarcity with her approach to storytelling.

The passion of the subjects’ stories transcended the language barrier. Varda demonstrates a keen sense of empathy when speaking to the “gleaners,” asking them questions, but truly listening and responding to them. The documentary is a poetic call-to-action that highlights the humanity of the people that rely on the discarded materials of others – be it food to live, art to inspire, or souvenirs to remember. Varda essentially immerses herself into the gleaning community, getting her hands dirty while exposing the harsh realities of the topic. This is a poignant and inspiring film that highlights the other side of food insecurity, immigration, and marginalization – the side that is imbued with tradition, dedication, and a thirst to repurpose.

Essentially, Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse is a documentary that asks why we throw away what we do and what it means to repurpose waste while providing a podium for gleaners to tell their stories. In part, Varda suggests that we all, in one way or another, have likely gleaned before.