France | Black & White and Color, 90 minutes
A real-time drama following a singer waiting for the results of a medical test.
Director: Agnès Varda
Producers: Georges de Beauregard, Carlo Ponti
Cinematography: Paul Bonis,
Alain Levent, Jean Rabier
Screenplay: Agnès Varda
Starring: Corinne Marchand (“Florence ‘Cléo’ Victoire”), Dominque Davray (“Angèle”), Antoine Bourseiller (“Antoine”), Dorothée Blanck (“Dorothée”)
“In my films I always wanted to make people see deeply. I don’t want to show things, but to give people the desire to see.”
—Agnès Varda
Throughout cinema history, there have been several films made in “real-time,” meaning that the events shown are allowed to unfold at the same pace that the characters experience them. This is a useful device for ramping up suspense in stories about people under pressure—with the minutes ticking down toward the possible discovery of a murder (Rope), a jury’s decision (12 Angry Men), a bank robbery (Victoria), or even the oxygen levels inside a coffin (Buried). In Cleo from 5 to 7, Agnès Varda uses this anxiety-infused technique to add drama to her gentle film about a woman walking through the streets of Paris.
The title is in fact a little misleading, as the film actually follows Florence “Cléo” Victoire (Corinne Marchand) for an hour and a half as she waits for the results of a medical diagnosis. It begins at 5:00 p.m. with Cléo having her tarot cards read, and finishes at 6:30 p.m. as her test results are received. In between, Cléo wanders through 1960s Paris, visiting friends, drinking in cafés, walking through a park, traveling in cabs and trams, rehearsing her act, and finally, meeting a lovely soldier. She covers much ground in just ninety minutes, and we learn a lot about her in the process. Cléo is a pop singer with three minor hits to her name. She is impulsive, volatile, and given to quick changes in emotion and adding as much drama as her friends will put up with. She’s also superficial and vain, admiring herself in every reflective surface. In this way, Agnès Varda avoids sentimentality. The audience feels for Cléo’s impending medical diagnosis, but she’s not always likable.
Instead of the single-take concept that many of these real-time movies employ, Agnès Varda uses jump cuts, handheld cameras, transitions from color to black-and-white film, and unconventional framing to give the film a sense of playful freedom. She utilizes some of the same techniques as the burgeoning cinema verité (“real cinema”) genre to add a feeling of immediacy. And so, by placing Cléo’s story in real-time and using a documentary style, this everyday story becomes highly dramatic onscreen. It’s also something of a time capsule of 1960s Paris, incorporating real footage of the bustling city streets. There is also a fun silent film inserted into the middle of the story, starring Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, and Jean-Claude Brialy.
The major theme in Cleo from 5 to 7 is time. This refers to both objective time (the actual minutes) and subjective time (how time can seem to contract or expand depending on your situation). The other theme is about women being “seen”—how Cléo sees herself, how she is seen by others, and how much (or little) she sees others—all told through the perceptive eyes of Agnès Varda.
The experimental nature of Cleo from 5 to 7 is reminiscent of other films from the French New Wave such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and The 400 Blows by François Truffaut. But although the latter film is often credited with starting this cinematic movement, Agnès Varda’s La Pointe Courte (named after the small fishing village where it was filmed) was released five years earlier and is now regarded as the first film of the French New Wave. This movement contained two distinct camps of filmmakers, each with their own style. The “Right Bank” used handheld cameras, jump cuts, and fast switches of tone. Many of these directors were movie lovers who came from film criticism and wrote for the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, including directors such as Godard, Truffaut, and Claude Chabrol. The “Left Bank” used a less erratic style and were more concerned with politics. They saw film not so much as merely a form of entertainment but rather as being on the same level with literature and art. Filmmakers in this group included Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, and Jacques Demy.
Agnès Varda’s style may seem at first glance to be more Right Bank, but she associated herself with the Left. She didn’t come from a film criticism background, instead studying literature, psychology, art history, and photography before moving into film. Born in Brussels in 1928, she changed her name from Arlette to Agnès at eighteen. Her family moved from Belgium to France to escape German bombing at the start of World War II, and she spent her teenage years living in the port city of Sète. Varda then moved to Paris to study and afterwards found work as a photographer for the Théâtre National Populaire (TNP), taking photos of stage productions. There Varda met two actors, Philippe Noiret and Silvia Monfort, who agreed to star in her debut film, La Pointe Courte. In between making La Pointe Courte and Cleo from 5 to 7, Varda met Jacques Demy, whose debut Lola was released in 1961 to rave reviews. They fell in love, marrying in 1962 and remaining together until his death in 1990.
Throughout the 1960s, Agnès Varda was an important voice in the French New Wave. She was the only female filmmaker working in France at that time and was actively engaged with social issues. Varda made narrative dramas and documentaries, often with female protagonists, and her films commented on current issues, such as Le Bonheur (Happiness) released in 1965, which looked at the sexual revolution. Her work is varied, but each of her films contain striking visuals owing to her background as a photographer.
When Jacques Demy passed away in 1990, Agnès Varda made a trio of personal films as a tribute to him. Jacquot de Nantes was a dramatized version of his childhood. For Les Demoiselles ont eu 25 ans (The Young Girls Turn 25), Varda traveled to the town of Rochefort to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort. And L’univers de Jacques Demy (The World of Jacques Demy) delved into his body of work and legacy.
In the 2000s, Agnès Varda continued to make documentaries, each demonstrating a wonderfully inventive and lyrical style. Most recently, she teamed up with visual artist JR to make Faces Places, released in 2017, where they traveled around the French countryside in a photo booth van taking photos of everyday people and pasting them onto the sides of buildings. Eyes are a strong motif throughout the film—evoking both a celebration of the art that Varda’s unique perspective has given the world and her need to see the world before she lost her eyesight completely.
When Faces Places was nominated for Best Documentary by the Motion Picture Academy of 2018, Agnès Varda became the oldest Oscar nominee in history. She was also awarded a special lifetime achievement Oscar in 2017 after receiving an honorary Palme d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival in recognition of her remarkable contributions to cinema. Now ninety years old, Agnès Varda shows no sign of slowing down—either in work or in activism. At the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, she walked the steps of the Palais des Festivals with eighty-one other women in a protest against gender inequality. Throughout the history of the Cannes Film Festival, only eighty-two female directors have ever been accepted into the official competition, and only two have won the Palme d’Or: Jane Campion and Agnès Varda.
As she stood at the stop of the stairs, actor Cate Blanchett and Varda
