Lions Love (…and Lies)

1969, dir Agnès Varda w/Viva, James Rado, Gerome Ragni, Shirley Clarke, Eddie Constantine, Peter Bogdanovich, 112 min, DCP

Agnès Varda brings New York counterculture to Los Angeles. In a rented house in the sun-soaked Hollywood Hills, a woman and two men – Viva, of Warhol Factory fame, and James Rado and Gerome Ragni, who created and starred in the rock musical Hair – delight in one another’s bodies while musing on love, stardom, and politics. They are soon joined by underground director Shirley Clarke, playing herself as well as functioning as a surrogate for Varda. LIONS LOVE (…AND LIES) is a metacinematic inquiry into the alternating currents of whimsy and tragedy that typified late-sixties America. – Criterion Collection