[Agnès Varda's method in Le Bonheur] is the antithesis of the conventional scripted film: she has hoped that it will draw from its audience the kind of reactions she experiences herself when she looks at snapshots or at impressionist paintings: the ideas reside in the images, in the light and warmth and delicate shadows of summer, and later on in the maturity of autumn when sweaters worn by humans match the golden leaves but the idyll is modified by a chill fogging of the breath.

Happiness exists en famille at a picnic in the woods to celebrate Father's Day. The pictures have a gentle glow, and the careful planning of colour serves to remove us sufficiently from reality, into the small and personal world of a carpenter untouched by the social and political distractions of life around him. Placid at work amid his wood-shavings, weaving contentedly around...