I didn't love this film but if you're going to watch "The Gleaners & I" anyway, it might just be included on the DVD as a special feature and it wouldn't hurt to watch it. This isn't a glowing endorsement but this film has the same flaw as the original film--but more so. This is because the first film was ostensibly about waste and how modern pickers make use of things discarded by others--mostly food. This is a WONDERFUL concept and indictment on modern society. But too often the film focused on the filmmaker, Ms. Varda--and here in the follow-up it's even more focused on her.
One part of this follow-up I adored was the interview with her favorite subject of the first film, Alain. She asks him in the film if he liked the documentary and he says he did. However, she then asks if there was anything he didn't like and the very perceptive Alain responded that the film featured too much of HER in it! In other words, she should have kept the focus on modern gleaners picking through garbage to find useful items, such as food. He was 100% right and that's exactly how I felt. But here comes the weird part--Vardas then allowed (or encouraged or set up) some middle- class lady to then attack Alain to tell him he was wrong! First off this WAS his opinion and the filmmaker DID ask. Second, having a proxy who is NOT even a gleaner/picker going after him was completely inappropriate...and weird. And, if you think about it, it PROVES that Alain was right!!
As for the rest, the filmmaker talks a lot about herself, how folks responded to her by mail and then he she visits with a bunch of the other folks from the first film. Not brilliant filmmaking by any stretch but worth a look--especially to revisit Alain.
