I deeply dislike the films of French director Agnès Varda. She has been around forever. She is often associated with the French New Wave moment. Her first film was made back in the mid-'50s, La pointe-courte, and the film that gave her an art-house hit on this side of world, Vagabond (1985), begins and ends with a woman in a ditch. What is Varda the master of? She is the master of all that is uninteresting—in short, the master of all that is bad about art-house cinema: stories that have no drive or thrills. Her films lack real muscles. They do not get to the essence of anything. They are lightly political and very often precious. For example, her new documentary, The Beaches of Agnès, which is about herself and her creative process (she was 81 at the time of the film's production, and the film lasts almost two hours), has a scene that says it all: On a Belgian beach, Varda has her assistants set up a number of mirrors in seemingly random positions. The wind blows the sand this way and that. The hair of the assistants blows this way and that. Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" fills the windy air. The dreamy director looks at the dreamy sea. This is all her art can be about. This preciousness, this whimsy, this empty beauty. Varsity Theatre, Sept 11–17.