Cleo from 5 to 7 Analysis

Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Written and Directed by: Agnes Varda
Nominated at Cannes Film Festival 1962.

The film has an interesting premise - it's about an arrogant popstar, Cleo, who is rambling around the city during the 2 hours while she is waiting for her medical test results for stomach cancer. Let's breakdown the premise - it's interesting because the time span of the story of the film is just 2 hours and in spite of the pacing of the film, the low time span creates more interest. There is something for us to discover within the film, if she'll be diagnosed with cancer or not. And there's this format of a travel film, where she is randomly roaming, meeting people, and having conversations. This premise is so broad that different filmmakers will make drastically different films out of this. The film explores existentialism, where she is coming to terms with her mortality. The film explores feminism in a lot of ways - it discusses the ideas of men not taking her seriously, about how she looks at beauty and ugliness and also something as simple as we see a lot of women at work - the shops she visits, the astrologer in the starting, a cab driver, the nude models, and more. It just shows how France was much ahead in these regards.

The film is a brilliant tour of France in the 1960s, if not for anything - I was just looking at the streets, the cafes, the restaurants, the shops, the way people dress, they way people talk and behave - with their glasses, smoking, and the way they dress - the style of the culture is very well captured. Cleo is very interesting, she is beautiful, energetic, full of life and yet she complaints and acts in a cynical way - of course, she's waiting for her test results - this behavior is understandable - but with my understanding of the character - it felt like she was like this before too. The conversation with Antoine, the solider, was very interesting because he adds a lot of perspective on death and love.