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Cleo from 5 to 7, 1962
The Varda march carries on!!
This was just fantastic.
The film opens with a young woman named Cleo (Corinne Marchand) receiving an incredibly specific tarot card reading. The news in the cards is not good. We learn that Cleo is waiting for the results of medical testing that will tell her whether or not she has cancer. Over the next two hours (just a little bit short of "real time"), we watch as Cleo interacts with various people in her life and reflects on her own feelings about her life and her diagnosis.
I thought that this film was really wonderful in terms of how it explored the relationship between our external and internal lives, and how they feed off of one another. The Cleo of the beginning of the film seems incredibly superficial. She comforts herself by declaring that as long as she is beautiful, she is alive. But Cleo's superficiality is not necessarily an innate characteristic. The movie makes us very aware of how Cleo is viewed by both strangers (especially men) and the people in her own life. At times there's this fabulous duality, such as when Cleo enters an art studio full of mottled, craggy humanoid sculpture, only to come into a room where a beautiful nude woman is being sculpted by an entire class of students. What the world tells us is valuable is what we come to value in ourselves.
And yet. Some part of Cleo chafes under this way of constructing herself. She wants to be recognized for her music. She is put off by the condescension of her lover and her musical collaborators. No one in the film, until the end, seems to take her illness seriously. (Question: the IMDb summary says that Cleo is a "hypochondriac"--but is she? Did I miss something in the film that she always thinks she is sick?). Cleo is constantly looking for signs in the world--and in particular she seems to have an eye for bad omens. In this way we can feel the lack of control that torments her.
The imagery in the film was just great. I loved the many POV shots that put us in Cleo's point of view. I also loved the progression of the costumes. Cleo appears early in the film in an ethereal white outfit--she looks like she is floating. But by the end her clothing and her mannerisms are borderline funereal. In one scene later in the film, she sits on a bench to talk with someone and you can see an entire sunny field stretched out behind them--while Cleo herself is on the bench in a strip of shadow.
It's interesting to watch this film so close on the heels of watching Sound of Metal. Both films deal with protagonists who are confronting medical issues out of their control and being forced to reconsider their lives and priorities.
This is definitely my favorite of the Varda films I've seen thus far.
Cleo from 5 to 7, 1962
The Varda march carries on!!
This was just fantastic.
The film opens with a young woman named Cleo (Corinne Marchand) receiving an incredibly specific tarot card reading. The news in the cards is not good. We learn that Cleo is waiting for the results of medical testing that will tell her whether or not she has cancer. Over the next two hours (just a little bit short of "real time"), we watch as Cleo interacts with various people in her life and reflects on her own feelings about her life and her diagnosis.
I thought that this film was really wonderful in terms of how it explored the relationship between our external and internal lives, and how they feed off of one another. The Cleo of the beginning of the film seems incredibly superficial. She comforts herself by declaring that as long as she is beautiful, she is alive. But Cleo's superficiality is not necessarily an innate characteristic. The movie makes us very aware of how Cleo is viewed by both strangers (especially men) and the people in her own life. At times there's this fabulous duality, such as when Cleo enters an art studio full of mottled, craggy humanoid sculpture, only to come into a room where a beautiful nude woman is being sculpted by an entire class of students. What the world tells us is valuable is what we come to value in ourselves.
And yet. Some part of Cleo chafes under this way of constructing herself. She wants to be recognized for her music. She is put off by the condescension of her lover and her musical collaborators. No one in the film, until the end, seems to take her illness seriously. (Question: the IMDb summary says that Cleo is a "hypochondriac"--but is she? Did I miss something in the film that she always thinks she is sick?). Cleo is constantly looking for signs in the world--and in particular she seems to have an eye for bad omens. In this way we can feel the lack of control that torments her.
The imagery in the film was just great. I loved the many POV shots that put us in Cleo's point of view. I also loved the progression of the costumes. Cleo appears early in the film in an ethereal white outfit--she looks like she is floating. But by the end her clothing and her mannerisms are borderline funereal. In one scene later in the film, she sits on a bench to talk with someone and you can see an entire sunny field stretched out behind them--while Cleo herself is on the bench in a strip of shadow.
It's interesting to watch this film so close on the heels of watching Sound of Metal. Both films deal with protagonists who are confronting medical issues out of their control and being forced to reconsider their lives and priorities.
This is definitely my favorite of the Varda films I've seen thus far.