Cleo from 5 to 7 Is Yet Another Quietly Powerful Triumph For Director Agnes Varda

If Spike Lee's 25th Hour was about peoples present being impacted by events from one person's past, Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 is a story about how the uncertain future of one individual impacts the present-day lives of other individuals. Whose future turns out to have such an immense ripple effect? That would be Cleo (Corrine Marchand), a woman who we are introduced to as getting her future getting told to her by way of a fortune teller and her tarot cards. What kind of future do these objects foretell for Cleo? Not a good one, which, despite attempts by the fortune teller to twist what the cards have said into something more positive, sends Cleo into a spiral of despair.

Since we're starting the story in media res, a lot of information about Cleo's personal life is withheld from the viewer at first, we're introduced to her simply as a weary woman looking for some clarity on her future. Shortly after this opening though, we learn that Cleo is so eager to figure out what her future entails because she's awaiting the results of a medical examination that will determine whether she's been diagnosed with cancer or not. There are two hours to go until the results come in (hence the "5 to 7" in the title) and every minute of this period of waiting stretches on for eternity for Cleo, though under the writing and direction of Agnes Varda, it turns out to be an absorbing passage of time for viewers to watch.

The aforementioned decision in Varda's script to kick off the film in an in media res fashion is a brilliant way to differentiate how the viewer perceives Cleo compared to most of the rest of the characters in this world. You see, Cleo is actually a notable singer, a celebrity with all kinds of posh extravagances, including the services of a maid named Angele (Dominique Davray). For much of the world, Cleo is just another famous face, but Cleo from 5 to 7 intentionally has the character first defined by Cleo's own perspective and her health-based worries rather than aspects of her famous lifestyle. Her paranoia over her impending medical diagnosis shows more vulnerability than conventional portraits of glamorous & famous singers and its a paranoia that Varda's script realizes with impeccable levels of authenticity.

There's a realistically messy quality to the way Cleo's anxiety is written that evokes realism so effortlessly and the same can be said for Corrine Marchand similarly true-to-life lead performance as Cleo. Marchand's excellent work in the main role of Cleo 5 to 7 gets put to great use in a screenplay that, much like Agnes Varda's debut feature La Pointe Courte, is entirely fixated on small-scale conversations contemplating an uncertain future. In the case of this particular 1962 directorial effort from Agnes Varda, Cleo 5 to 7 splits its story up into two sections, with the first centering on Cleo interacting with figures crucial to her lifestyle as a singer like Angele or a pair of songwriters who all see Cleo as a chance to garner greater levels of fame rather than as a person.

The second section of Cleo 5 to 7 sees Cleo interacting with more ordinary individuals like a nude model and a man about to be sent off to war who are much more empathetic souls. Both portions of Cleo 5 to 7 are sublime creations, with the first portion of the proceedings being especially good at capturing the intimate internal struggles Cleo is enduring in the midst of a whole lot of excess. The dialogue exchanges between herself and the dry wit of Angele are mighty humorous and I love the intricately detailed design work that's gone into Cleo's luxurious pad, which comes complete with a swing straight out of a Jean-Honore Fragonard painting and a whole bunch of kittens that amusingly find a way to appear in every frame of footage set in this environment. 

There's so much to absorb in Cleo's humble abode that you could easily spend a prolonged period of time just freeze framing any given moment set in this room and picking out delightful background details in the set design. But this set doesn't just work as an exercise in putting your pause button to good use, it also functions as an excellent way of visually reflecting how all of the extravagances in Cleo's life haven't stifled her internal woes. The persistent internal woes of her character are best exemplified in perhaps the most visually outstanding moment of Cleo 5 to 7 which entails Cleo singing a new song a pair of songwriters have penned for her in a close-up shot that sees her singing against a pure black backdrop. At this moment, everything around her has vanished, all the viewer is left with is Cleo and her vocals.

Corrine Marchand's restrained facial expressions and her haunting vocals beautifully convey so much anguish in this moment and it feels like a precursor to one of the best scenes in The Shape of Water in how it serves as a brief digression into fantasy in a movie otherwise rooted in some form of reality that's intended to shed some light on the personal psychology of the protagonist. What an utterly beautiful sequence, it's just so brilliantly realized and emotionally powerful. A similar level of exquisitely realized pathos is prominent throughout the rest of the proceedings, including in the conversations between Cleo and Antoine (Antoine Bourseiller), a man about to be sent off to war. Both of these characters find some mild solace in knowing they're not alone in having to face down immense uncertainty on how many days they have left on this Earth. Their quietly moving interactions prove to be a fittingly thoughtful way to close out Cleo from 5 to 7, another remarkable Agnes Varda directorial effort that depicts how well this filmmaker could find mesmerizing pathos in the lives of ordinary human beings.