Cast:
Corinne Marchand (Florence "Cléo"), José Luis de Vilallonga (José), Loye Payen (Irma), Dominique Davray (Angèle), Serge Korber (Maurice), Dorothée Blanck (Dorothée), Raymond Cauchetier (Raoul), Michel Legrand (Bob), Antoine Bourseiller (Antoine), and Robert Postec (Doctor Valineau) Written and Directed by Agnes Varda.
Review:
“I started totally free and crazy and innocent. Now I’ve seen many films, and many beautiful films. And I try to keep a certain level of quality of my films. I don’t do commercials, I don’t do films pre-prepared by other people, I don’t do star system. So I do my own little thing.”
There are no better words to introduce Agnes Varda aside from the fact that Martin Scorsese once described her as a "one of the Gods of cinema". She was born in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium to French and Greek parents but raised in Sète in France. She studied literature and psychology at the Sorvonne in Paris before moving onto to studying art history at the École du Louvre and later photography. She was the photographer at the Théâtre National Populaire (as opened by a friend) from 1951 to 1961, but she soon found an interest in what she described as "before and after the snapshot" (she also stated that she did not see many films in her youth, and she thought that perhaps it might have stopped her from wanting to be a filmmaker). Her first film as a director came with La Pointe Courte (1955), filmed in Sète that employed a mix of fact and fiction in a mix of melodrama and cinéma vérité that sees both scenes from a withering romance and the life of villagers in a fishing town. The low-budget film has been cited as a precursor to the "French New Wave" (which she called a "man's club"), but it was not a financial success at the time due to lack of distribution, and Varda spent the next couple of years directing short films. Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) is her second overall feature film. She described her filmmaking as "cinécriture", which relates to the total concept in a filmmaker and their imprint on a film from the writing to the editing process. All in all, Varda would serve as a director and writer for a mix of theatrical films, documentaries, and short films until her death in 2019 at the age of 90, doing films such as Vagabond (1985) and Faces Places (2017).
In France, there is a term called "cinq à sept" that refers to both the time between 5 and 7pm along with a quick afternoon tryst. The film runs at 90 minutes and basically is told in real-time (yes, that means the film really ends at 6:30, but work with it). It involves a woman who is on the verge of hearing important news that meanders around Paris that seems quite timeless in the plight of seeing one's mortality dangle while others (friends, strangers, whatever) are just doing their own thing. In other words, one discovers the joy that Varda has interest in showing in a film that does not dwell in outright melodrama with a subject matter like this (one part shows a brief amusing film seen with guest appearances from Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard, incidentally). In other words, it's not about the cancer, it's about someone who finds people who only spoil her rather than love her, a person who strips the bounds of things to look at her (such as wigs or clothing). Asking about tarot cards in the beginning goes to accepting one as having a choice and of fulfillment, one that finds solace in being oneself without being haunted by looming inevitability. Marchand is most famous for this role, one that shows the ideal level of selfish charm that comes with meeting a desire for emotional support in a world that can only think of itself. The rest of the cast is mostly aloof in the ideal sense required, aside from Cauchetier, who shares the last key scenes with Marchand to establish just what kind of fear lies within a day that happens to be the longest of the year. Its ending is merely just when one happens to pull the cover out rather than just playing to formula, one that can go its own way. Its feminine perspective on the perils of aging within the company one keeps is a capable one. At any rate, the movie is a useful way to spend one's time in seeing the emotional qualities that arise from wondering just really matter when one's life is in transit.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
Next Time: Olivia (1951).
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