How Cleo from 5 to 7 por­trays a city under the female gaze

Agnès Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7 exam­ines a woman walk­ing, fol­low­ing the mourn­ful tit­u­lar pro­tag­o­nist around Paris in inti­mate detail. The film is not only an enjoy­ably unique explo­ration of com­ing to terms with ill­ness and mor­tal­i­ty but a snap­shot of the French cap­i­tal cir­ca 1962, and even its cin­e­mat­ic culture.

Yet what real­ly allows Varda’s sec­ond fea­ture to stand out is how its per­am­bu­la­to­ry eye fills the screen with detail, so much detail in fact that an essay would be wor­thi­er to cov­er the sheer amount of inter­est­ing ref­er­ences to build­ings, clothes, cars, objects, peo­ple, antiques and oth­er para­pher­na­lia that appears on screen. Though a sim­i­lar empha­sis was present in Varda’s pre­vi­ous film, La Pointe Courte, Cleo is almost sole­ly con­struct­ed around such detail. Even the tini­est of things can relate to the character’s wor­ries and concerns.

The film fol­lows a famous singer, Cleo (Corinne Marc­hand), around the city on foot, by car and by bus. It is the day she is due her results back regard­ing tests she has had in search of can­cer. Try­ing to earnest­ly avoid what this could mean for her, she wan­ders almost aim­less­ly from place to place; talk­ing to strangers, meet­ing friends and get­ting taxis to nowhere. It is filled with super­sti­tion, its open­ing sequence of a tarot card read­ing remov­ing, lit­er­al­ly, the colour from the character’s life and every­thing she sees.

Cleo’s own mor­tal­i­ty hangs heav­i­ly over her jour­ney and the film explores Paris with this unusu­al­ly dark empha­sis. Ulti­mate­ly, she finds out that fear itself is large­ly self-per­pet­u­at­ing but it was by tra­vers­ing the most typ­i­cal and every­day of sce­nar­ios that buffered the news of her final diag­no­sis. She is in search of head­space as much as phys­i­cal space. But what did she see on her jour­ney? Recount­ing it has as strange an effect as film­ing it had.

Cleo’s day unfolds like this: she leaves the for­tune teller and walks down the street to a café where she meets her assis­tant (Dominique Davray). This assis­tant con­soles her whilst she spills her cof­fee. She over­hears a cou­ple argu­ing before the pair leave and ven­ture to a hat shop. ​“Every­thing suits me” Cleo insists and she buys an expen­sive win­ter hat in spite of it being sum­mer. Time is poten­tial­ly extend­ed for her by the pur­chase. They take a taxi to Cleo’s flat and are harassed on the way by men. They laugh it off but Cleo dark­ness returns on see­ing some unusu­al carved orna­ments in a window.

Art stu­dents block the streets while the taxi radio tells of whiskey sham­poo, the Alger­ian War, Kennedy and ​“Free the Bre­tons”. There’s a poster for Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou on a wall out­side of the flat. Inside, Cleo has a vari­ety of kit­tens, an extrav­a­gant bed, a piano and oth­er fur­ni­ture. Her lover (José Luis de Vilal­lon­ga) pops around briefly before a pair of musi­cians – one of whom is Michel Legrand – vis­it to show her some new mate­r­i­al. A sad song makes her weep and she leaves in a black dress to wan­der again.

Cleo walks down the street and dis­turbs some pigeons. A man is per­form­ing, swal­low­ing frogs. She flees in dis­gust as the eyes of men con­tin­u­al­ly watch her. She heads to Le Dôme on Boule­vard du Mont­par­nasse and plays her last sin­gle on the juke­box. There are paint­ings on Le Dôme’s walls which she looks at whilst she drinks a cognac. The street beck­ons again. Anoth­er per­former dis­gusts her with a nee­dle poked into his arm. She finds solace in a sculptor’s stu­dio where her friend (Dorothée Blanck) is mod­el­ling for a class. They leave togeth­er in a car and trav­el to the cin­e­ma of her friend’s part­ner to drop some reels off.

They watch a short film with cameos from Anna Kari­na, Jean-Luc Godard, Eddie Con­stan­tine, Jean-Claude Bri­aly and Sami Frey. The film is in fact by Var­da, her short ode to silent com­e­dy, Les fiancés du pont Mac Don­ald ou (Méfiez-vous des lunettes noires). The women leave and walk to Le Dôme again but there’s been an acci­dent and they decide to take anoth­er taxi. Cleo gives her friend the new hat before she leaves and is dropped off in the park. She strikes up con­ver­sa­tion with a sol­dier on leave (Antoine Bour­seiller), dis­tract­ing from her wor­ries again. They catch a bus togeth­er to the hos­pi­tal, so much detail in between, arriv­ing to find she’ll need two months of treat­ment but should be fine. Her wor­ry drove her fran­tic steps but she knows her­self bet­ter now.

Why list these events? This mael­strom of infor­ma­tion can only pro­vide a glimpse at the end­less detail in Varda’s mas­ter­piece. Yet cri­tiquing the film in a tra­di­tion­al way doesn’t quite work; its struc­ture is too wan­der­ing, too drift­ing like a Sit­u­a­tion­ist art­work. From recount­ing just the bare bones of what is seen on Cleo’s jour­ney around Paris on that sad day, Varda’s end­less and insa­tiable curios­i­ty is per­ceiv­able and that is the real key. She under­stands that the ordi­nary has its own draws and won­ders, even allow­ing for a cursed woman to briefly for­get her upcom­ing ordeal with illness.

Such curios­i­ty in the every­day – in things, thoughts and wan­ders – is real­ly the mis­sion state­ment of Varda’s film­mak­ing as a whole and it was Cleo who first walked it into being.