Cléo from 5 to 7

As a lone female voice within the often male-dominated French New Wave, Agnès Varda’s critical stock and popularity has continually risen since the 1960s. Today, she may well be as well-known as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, and Cléo de 5 à 7, her debut feature and best-known film, was voted the fourteenth-best film of all time in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll. Cléo follows a successful singer who, afraid that she has a serious health condition, makes her way through Paris between 5 and 7 PM. With typical New Wave playfulness, Varda ostensibly presents Cléo’s adventures in real time, though the film is only ninety minutes long. Cléo’s narrative is as loose and digressive as those of Varda’s contemporaries, its tone shifting between witty comedy, hopeful tenderness, and existential dread, often within the same scene. Cléo’s alienation within an overwhelmingly male social and professional milieu is juxtaposed with an incisive portrait of female friendship, in her relationship with her maid and assistant Angèle. Beyond its status as a masterpiece of feminist cinema, Cléo’s digressions and incidental details build a wide-ranging portrait of French society in the 1960s, from class divisions, to changing popular culture, to the Algerian War. An essential film, not to be missed.

James O’Connell Nash