MOVIE REVIEW : Agnes Varda’s Loving Portrait of Her ‘Jacquot’ : The late filmmaker Jacques Demy’s early years are enchantingly evoked in his wife’s film.

Near the beginning of “Jacquot” (at the Music Hall), Agnes Varda’s enchanting tribute to her late husband, director Jacques Demy, Varda tells us that Demy’s “childhood was his treasure and the source of inspiration for his films.” She aptly describes her film as “an evocation”--a biography of Demy’s early years in Nantes in Western France on the Loire River. It is seamlessly punctuated with clips from his films and with loving glimpses of the gaunt-looking but still gallant Demy, who occasionally comments on his own life and work.

The heart of the matter is how as a boy Demy, who was born in 1931 and died of leukemia in 1990, evolved into a filmmaker by the time he had reached his teens. Demy seems to have had a truly happy childhood, living with his parents and a younger brother in a tiny apartment over his father’s garage--the actual garage seen in the film.

It is altogether fitting that the man whose most famous film, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (1964), unfolds entirely in song, had parents who occasionally would start singing as they worked--the father (Daniel Dublet) as an auto mechanic, the mother (Brigitte de Villepoix) as a hairdresser.

When little Jacquot saw a puppet show, he was inspired to make his own puppets and put on his own show. When he was given a primitive hand-cranked projector and a couple of Chaplin shorts, he discovered the need to try his hand at making his own movies and to present them in a kitchen cabinet shelf whimsically transformed into a miniature movie screen, complete with proscenium and red drapes. Dogged in his persistence and endless in his resourcefulness in creating his own tools and teaching himself every aspect of elementary filmmaking, Demy transformed a small attic, also used by his father to store tires, into a miniature studio for his experiments in animation; in a very real sense he was learning to master the cinema by reinventing it.

Meanwhile, he thrilled to such movies as Marcel Carne’s “The Devil’s Envoys” (1942) and “Children of Paradise” (1945) and Robert Bresson’s “Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne” (1946); not even World War II, which at times came perilously close to the Demys, undermined his perseverance.

The meticulous depiction of Demy’s quiet, dedicated pursuit of his passion becomes the film’s sturdy spine, allowing Varda to make her digressions enrich her husband’s story rather than to distract from it. Her use of the adult Demy is disciplined and succinct and her use of clips swift and inspired.

We discover that “a country cousin turned into an upscale tart by a Brazilian millionaire” provided the inspiration years later for Jeanne Moreau’s peroxided compulsive gambler in Demy’s “Bay of Angels” (1962) as Varda cuts from the cousin to Moreau. Of special importance is Nantes’ elegant 19th-Century arcade, the Passage Pomeraye, where in a second-hand shop Jacquot traded five children’s books and his Erector set for his first camera (9.5 mm); it is seen not only in Varda’s film but in clips from Demy’s “Lola” (1960) and “Umbrellas of Cherbourg.”

“Jacquot” itself is essentially in black and white, but whenever the budding artist’s imagination starts soaring it switches to color.

United in their passion for filmmaking, Demy and Varda were otherwise as much a study in contrasts as their films. The earthy, intellectual Varda is a short, ample woman, as direct and brisk as her films; Demy was a slim, handsome man, perhaps as romantic in his nature as in his elegant, swirling pictures. They complemented one another in life as they do in “Jacquot,” the only time they ever worked together in the more than 30 years they shared.

French filmmakers pay more attention to children than most do, and Varda, always wonderful with youngsters, directs the three boys--Philippe Maron, Edouard Joubeaud, Laurent Monnier, all of whom resemble the adult Demy--to play Jacquot to perfection.

“Jacquot” (rated PG for mild sensuality and language) is a heartfelt homage to the memory of Demy and his work, but it is emphatically an Agnes Varda film; neither husband nor wife would have wanted it any other way.

‘Jacquot’

Philippe Maron: Jacquot 1

Edouard Joubeaud: Jacquot 2

Laurent Monnier: Jacquot 3

Brigitte de Villepoix: Mother

Daniel Dublet: Father

Jacques Demy: As himself

A Sony Pictures Classics release of a Cine-Tamaris production. Writer-director Agnes Varda. Based on the memories of Jacques Demy. Cinematographers Patrick Blossier, Agnes Godard, Georges Strouve. Editor Marie-Jo Audiard. Costumes Francoise Disle. Music Joanna Bruzdowicz. Production design Robert Nardone, Olivier Radot. Sound Jean-Pierre LaForce. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG (for mild sensuality and language).