It was only when we watched Faces, Places that I learned that we’d never watched a single film by Agnès Varda, a significant force in the French New Wave movement. Her death earlier this year only reminded me of the need again and so here is one of her most famous works. This one is certainly more approachable and less cryptic than many of the other French New Wave films we’ve seen plus it does put women in its centre in a way that those films do not.
Cléo is a singer who is convinced that she is sick but no one seems to take her seriously. She has gone to a doctor for medical tests and is anxiously waiting for the results. She goes to a fortune teller to reassure herself but the Tarot reading suggests that she is doomed and she becomes more fearful. When she recounts this to her assistant Angèle at a café, the latter dismisses it as being nothing serious and to think positively. Later they walk by a shop and Cléo browses for hats but is drawn only to black, fur hat even though it is out of season. When they get back to her home, Cléo’s lover drops by for a brief visit but he is a busy man and has little time to spend with her. Angèle even advises her not to tell him about her supposed illness as men don’t like to hear women talk about their problems. When her songwriters arrive for a rehearsal session and hear about her illness, they act as if she needs cheering with up with a joke. This goes on for the rest of the encounter as Cléo awaits her test results.
As with other French New Wave films, this one disdains a traditional story structure and instead portrays two hours of Cléo’s life in nearly real time. The photography is crisp and, somewhat surprisingly, captures the ordinary people on the streets of Paris better than almost any other film I can think of. Whether on foot or carefully navigating the streets in a car, Cléo’s trips across the city is almost shocking in how it showcases a lively city full of people all going about their daily routines and engaged in their own private conversations. I also love the female perspective that it adopts. When Cléo and Angèle take a taxi for example, their driver turns out to be a woman as well as they get to talking to her about what it’s like to be a female taxi driver. Of course they do still mostly talk about men and it’s perhaps somewhat ironic that the film ends with a scene in which Cléo finally meets someone who takes her concerns about her illness seriously and it’s a man. But it did make me realize that Godard’s films, as avant-garde as they are, really are all from the perspective of a man.
The themes of death and mortality hang heavily in this film and indeed it’s not subtle at all. While riding on the bus, Cléo’s eyes alight on a funeral parlor and in the taxi the radio issues a constant stream of bad news about deaths in Algeria, accidents and protests. Street performers engage in morbid acts involving self-mutilation and they even come across the scene of a murder. Yet the film does not offer a completely bleak vision of existentialism. The ending appears to suggest that love and compassion from another human being is enough to stave off these dark thoughts. I suspect that some might find this to be too sentimental and a bit of a cop out but I rather like that it’s not meaninglessness and absurdity all the way down. Its take on feminism is carefully considered as well. Both Cléo and Angèle outwardly behave in conformance with how men expect them to, keeping their true thoughts and feelings to themselves. This seems to tie in with her own sense of self-worth as she equates the beauty that she presents to the world with being alive.
It’s true that this film doesn’t immediately strike you as the work of a mad genius like Godard’s output so often does, so dense with ideas and thoughts that they border on being incomprehensible. But I find that I rather liked this more both for the powerful sense of place it gives to the streets of Paris and because I can actually understand and relate to its themes. It’s a shame that she never did make many films herself but I think I will be looking forward to watching those that exist.