Vagabond (1985)

So often in Agnés Varda’s 1985 ghost sto­ry, Vagabond, the cam­era tracks across a land­scape before the image fades into noth­ing­ness. Then, a flick­er of black before a new image bursts forth. This smooth, glid­ing action gives the cam­era the feel of a float­ing appari­tion observ­ing a moment while in tran­sit, attempt­ing to draw in as much detail as pos­si­ble but nev­er stop­ping to stare.

This nev­er feels like a pure­ly cos­met­ic deci­sion, or a way to imbue this deeply melan­cholic text with undue dynamism. It does, how­ev­er, trans­mit a feel­ing of evanes­cence and imper­ma­nence, the idea that it’s impos­si­ble to real­ly have the time, the incli­na­tion or even the emo­tion­al agili­ty to under­stand the wil­ful desires of others.

Hav­ing deliv­ered one of the great lead per­for­mances of the decade in Mau­rice Pialat’s brit­tle 1983 teen movie, A Nos Amours, San­drine Bon­naire once more shows her­self as a mas­ter of play­ing inde­fati­ga­ble and free-spir­it­ed women mask­ing deep wells of fragili­ty and con­fu­sion. The tragedy of this film, in which she stars as a tran­sient named Mona (aka Simone) wan­der­ing aim­less­ly around the scrub­lands, grave­yards and com­mu­ni­ty farms of Mont­pel­li­er, is that we know her fate from the off.

In the open­ing scene, Var­da shows us Mona’s frozen corpse in rigid repose, blan­ket­ed in dirt, at the bot­tom of a drainage ditch which runs down the edge of tat­ty vine­yard. This film, as Var­da her­self acknowl­edges in an open­ing mono­logue, is an attempt to re-trace Mona’s final days – a poet­ic solil­o­quy for an unknown woman.

Mona has a fer­al qual­i­ty which means she doesn’t mix well with oth­ers. With each new per­son she meets, a fast friend­ship is formed as quick­ly as it burns out to noth­ing. She could be read as the phys­i­cal embod­i­ment of free­dom – that is, a per­son who has staunch­ly cho­sen to opt our of civilised soci­ety and exist through alter­na­tive means. It’s nev­er real­ly spec­i­fied what hap­pened in her past that prompt­ed her to go it alone, but she is mil­i­tant in her apo­lit­i­cal out­look, nev­er moved or con­vinced by the pleas of those who want to help her, to bring her back into the cap­i­tal­ist fold. She sym­bol­is­es the elu­sive, abstract and erot­ic nature of free­dom, a con­cept ren­dered mean­ing­less in her refusal to exist with­in a defined system.

Var­da tries hard to mask her nat­ur­al affec­tion for the icon­o­clast Mona, but she can’t help but frame this charm­ing wan­der­er as a plucky folk hero­ine. The peo­ple she meets deliv­er mono­logues to the cam­era, attempt­ing to define her through their vague mem­o­ries. She is roman­ti­cised to a degree, which makes her plight more trag­ic. She is raped off cam­era but she takes var­i­ous indig­ni­ties in her stride. Despite its doomy end point, Varda’s film offers a com­pas­sion­ate depic­tion peo­ple who always want to help out a lost soul. The very fact they remem­ber Mona sug­gests that they are open to forg­ing new bonds, build­ing new rela­tion­ships and, wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, let­ting love in.

Vagabond is a film which com­bines every­thing that Var­da does best: a sto­ry ripped from the head­lines which she refus­es to ful­ly fic­tion­alise; a strong female lead who bat­tles against a patri­ar­chal sys­tem and against peo­ple who can’t com­pre­hend her anx­i­eties; a love of those lim­i­nal spaces between cities, roads, build­ings – loca­tions which appear as blank spaces on maps; a belief in build­ing sto­ries through small nuance rather than sweep­ing ges­tures. On that last point, you must watch this film (or, indeed, rewatch it) for a moment where Mona scoops the con­tents of a can of fish into her mouth and wipes the oily rem­nants across her face – a poet­ic vision of unself­con­scious con­tent­ment which defines this beau­ti­ful character.