Cléo de 5 à 7
Directed by Agnès Varda
Reviewed by Catherine MacLennan
In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer – Albert Camus
Agnès Varda’s 1961 film, Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cleo from 5 to 7) depicts the trying two-hour period of a woman awaiting the results of a medical test. In the opening scene, a tarot card reading, older hands turn over and shuffle cards, and younger hands select cards. The reading is troubling, with bad things foreseen, and even the Death card. The client is consoled; the card doesn’t necessarily mean death. Then the faces of the reader and client are revealed in a dramatic stylistic change: the seconds-earlier automatically-accepted colour film now seems garish and harsh as we see the faces in a softer, sympathetic black and white.
The film remains in black and white from that point on, and we see Cléo filling up her time until the crucial moment when she learns the truth – she meets with friends, shops, and wanders the streets of Paris. Filmed city street scenes always look great – in Cléo de 5 à 7 they exhibit a combination of style and naturalism. The camera brings the viewer close to Cléo as she rides in the cab, on the streetcar, or walks through the streets, passing the shops and the grumpy, alien Parisians. There are elements of an old Paris – of fortune tellers, superstition and grotesque street performers, and contemporary Paris (of the early 60s) – pop music, bright fashion, big hairstyles, and Cléo both clings and discards both as they relate to her situation. (People interested in the period will catch posters in the street scenes for both “Le Chien Andalou” and “Burt Lancaster – Elmer Gantry Le Charlatan.” As well, Michel Legrand, composer of the film score, and Jean-Luc Godard have cameo roles).
Is Cléo a “drama queen,” a big spoiled baby, a self-absorbed pop star that is fretting over nothing, or does she genuinely have potentially something serious that she must deal with? The lead actress, Corinne Marchand, capably plays both possibilities – she fusses as she is pampered over and complains about the recording of her song, while at the same time wishing to draw attention to it and herself. But in the supreme isolation having to concern herself with thoughts of life and death, people calling her a “drama queen” also seem completely unaware and separate from her plight. These are the times when friends and the familiar can seem like strangers and strange. She complains that her suitor doesn’t sense there is something wrong; her friends joke and dismiss her concerns, or are wrapped up in their lives. In a scene that illustrate her isolation she is a busy café – a couple to one side is arguing, her companion on her other side is telling a long anecdote to someone that includes the remark ‘when you have your health you have everything’ – Cléo listens here and there and doesn’t listen – she is alone in a crowd. It is a stranger instead that later provides the intimacy, calming and slower pace she requires.
While death and life surround one everyday, it is when one is really thinking about it that its imagery is unavoidable. In the street scenes, along with the “Coiffeur’ and the “Café” signs are the “Deuil” and “Bonne Santé” signs – actual street signs that jump out in this heightened context. Further, Varda, throughout the film adds imagery related to life (playing kittens, rambunctious art students, a toddler at a toy piano) and death (buying the black hat, “Black becomes me,” the death card, the broken mirror) and ambiguity (the incubator baby in “Snow White’s coffin," Cleo rising on a swing as decorative wings on a wall surround her) - all in the beautifully photographed journey across Paris, a journey of anxiety and torment where somehow a strength can suddenly emerge from unknown places.