Cleo From 5 to 7
In “Cleo From 5 to 7,” one can see the blueprint of Linklater’s “Before” movies, wherein we get a full picture of an individual in a short timespan. This is my first time watching a film from Agnès Varda, and it’s more than enough to get me interested in watching more of her work. By condensing the film’s timeline into two hours (or rather, 90 minutes), Varda doesn’t allow for any moments that don’t mean anything to the film; everything that happens here is important to who Cleo will be by the end. What’s striking is how familiar this type of story is to someone in 2021, and how fresh Varda’s approach keeps it as we watch the film.
The film begins in color, as a psychic is shuffling and placing down cards from a tarot deck which Cleo (Corinne Marchand) has selected. In a sense, the psychic is laying out what we will be watching unfold in the next 90 minutes in these five minutes. The tarot cards are the only thing we see in color in the film, however; once we begin to see faces, it is black-and-white from there. Cleo goes to the psychic as she is awaiting test results; the cards do not instill hope for her. Distraught, Cleo (a singer) meets her maid, Angele (Dominique Davray), at a cafe to give her the news, before the two share a cab to go back to Cleo’s apartment, beginning the film-long waiting game for Cleo to get the results she is dreading to get.
One thing the film doesn’t exactly lay out is whether Cleo is afraid of the worst-case scenario before or after her meeting with the psychic. We can infer that she was concerned about it beforehand, but the readings the psychic lays out brings her full anxiety to bear on the issue. The film is then about getting her from a place where she is simply waiting to hear the worst to a place where she is not allowing what could be to get in the way of living her life. This is part of what makes Varda’s film so wonderful to experience- it is a life’s worth of living condensed into 90 minutes, and we do not feel like it leaves anything out. If you have suffered from anxiety, and in particular, catastrophic thinking (which I do), “Cleo From 5 to 7” is a great film to watch, as it challenges us the way it challenges Cleo to not worry about what might be, and just appreciate what is, and what you have.
Because she worked in documentaries as often as she did in narrative films, and because her earliest work precedes that of the French New Wave, she’s not necessarily considered part of that movement, but “Cleo From 5 to 7” feels every bit as revolutionary in how it tells its story as some of Truffaut and Godard’s films. What distinguishes it, however, is the fact that it feels less inspired by narrative films of the past and more the naturalism of documentaries. The camera is simply following Cleo from one place to another, relatively in real-time, as she leaves the psychic. The film is notated by chapter headings for each little vignette. We see her experiences with Angele in the cab ride to the apartment; with her lover; with songwriters, who come to play her new songs to record, before she leaves the apartment again. From there, we get a wonderful moment where she goes into a cafe, plays one of her songs on the jukebox, and then watch reactions. She meets a modeling friend at a job, and they have a discussion. They break from one another, and she goes to a park, where she meets Antoine (Antoine Bourseiller), a soldier on leave from the Algerian War, which is going on at the time. They walk, get to know each other, and he goes with her to the doctor’s office, where the doctor has said he’ll be there at 7pm so she can get the results of her tests, but when he isn’t, they go to wait on a bench. The film doesn’t quite take us to 7pm, but it’s interesting how each little vignette of Cleo’s life in the span of this film is about 7 minutes long. By the time she finds out the results, her anxiety has dissipated, in part because of how life has pulled her away from worry. That is Varda’s gift as a storyteller- letting a situation unfold naturally, and watching how it challenges the main character, and forces them to grow. She’ll be able to face what she has to when all is said and done, and because we’ve gone on this 90-minute journey with her, we understand why.
