Vagabond (1985)

The greatest achievement of French cinema is that it has never felt embarrassed in portraying grim realities which have a direct bearing on the identity of French society.This is one of the reasons why there is a marked distinction in France between serious films and films as entertainment.This is something particularly true in case of certain French directors especially women filmmakers such as Marguerite Duras and Agnès Varda.It is through her bold film "Sans Toit Ni Loi" that Agnès Varda allows an astute film admirer to measure the vitality of French cinema.The making and universal appeal of "Vagabond/Sans Toit Ni Loi" is the biggest evidence of the fact that the creators of French cinema especially its talented filmmakers are open to direct films which show a distinct image of France.Vagabond is an absolutely honest film as everything depicted in it can be experienced in France where drifters and immigrants are given considerable amount of screen space. Sandrine Bonnaire's acting performance as a lonely drifter has no parallels in world cinema.She gives a whole new meaning to the representation of marginal characters in French cinema.

Fmovies: I just finished seeing sans tot Ni Li ten minutes ago and I can truthfully say that I am reverberating from the shock of having confronted a true classic. By "Classic" we are talking here the ilk of Blue Angel and Casablanca. This film portrays the existential tale of human loneliness embodied by the forlorn hapless Mona, incapable of love and unwilling to thank people for their efforts to help her....And those who help her- how skillfully they are handled by the movie maker.

Whether to hold their nose, love her or kick her, they know not.Last week I saw "North Country", loved it and gave it 3 stars, but this epic of the strange wandering girl deserves 5. It is the best movie I have seen this year. The five stars apply also to the music, photography and characterizations.

Agnès Varda is commonly associated with the Nouvelle Vague and more than François Truffaut, Jean-Luc "God Ard" or Eric Rohmer, she delivered some of the jewels of this French trend with "Cléo De 5 à 7" (1961). It doesn't mean that everything she made turned into gold. One can skip "les Créatures" (1966) without remorse. Twenty years later, she issued her strongest work since "Cléo De 5 à 7" which justifiably dominated from an artistic perspective French cinematographic production: "Sans Toi Ni Loi" that caused a stir.

It works as an alternation of flashes-back and interviews with people about their recollections involving a female rambler named Mona. We won't know much about herself. After she passed her high school diploma, she started to work for different bosses as a secretary but grew tired of his job. So, she packed in to leave for adventure through odd jobs. However, Varda's heroine keeps all her mystery and ambiguity. Are we really sure about what she says? Doesn't she lie? The female filmmaker doesn't comfort the audience because as the elements of the puzzle are pieced together, she throws the people who met Mona out in the same basket, either it is this university professor, this Maroccan guest worker or this former philosophy student who believed in the events of May 1968 in France: they are all responsible for Mona's death because of their egoism, their lack of communication with her. Varda delivers a similar message to her 1961 film: loneliness is a burden and it's better to open oneself to others to make things improve.

"Sans Toi Ni Loi" has the form of a documentary with a gritty tonality in which the female filmmaker keeps a certain distance with her heroine and everything she goes through. Thanks to this, tawdry or violent sequences take another dimension like the moment when the garage owner leaves Mona's tent pulling up his trousers or the man who rapes her in the woods. We won't see the horrid act.

Varda hired non-professional actors and that's why her film has a larger than life feel. An impression accentuated by Sandrine Bonnaire's sensational performance. She "lives" more than she acts her role. The role of this rambler fits her like a glove.

This is one that can stand multiple viewings.

Vagabond fmovies. sans toit ni loi ( without a roof nor rule) by Agnes Varda

Visual poetry in films is rarely sublime.Mostly its an interpretation that is fed to us either by the director of the film or some high-faultin critic who manages to see color in sepiated walls.The rare film that manages to transcend leaves you speechless with nothing to say as words fail to capture the essence , beauty and enigma of that film. All you can say is today I was blessed. Like a born again christian or a corpulent evangelist you wish to celebrate your new found faith with words , gestures , anything that says to the director of the film, you gave me a day of absolute completeness today and a film that will forever stay with me like unrequited love. That transcendental, evocative , sensitive , visually dazzling , transcendence is sans toit ni loi by agnes Varda. The film as has been pointed out is the cinematic equivalent of ulysses . Like James Joyce , varda lets rip a stream of consciousness that is disturbing , sincere and beautifully sublime.The protoganist is a young female drifter, a vagabond who is eternally free. She requires human contact only to fulfill her basic needs and her solitude is complete and absolute , accentuated by her complete disdain for authority or advise.The people she meets are all left with indelible memories of her.Those that pity her are later assailed by thier own infirmities. She refuses to blend or compromise and as one character says is perpetually withering.She dies alone and uncared for and she leaves absolutely no conventional emotional baggage behind.This isnt about a hippie , or a bum , or a dope addict or just a mentally unsound person. Its about a compassionate person who choses to abnegate all her social bonds and moral barriers and lives for nothing more than basic survival. She is the eternal soul that is freedom. Pure , absolute and totally decadent freedom.

What I admired the most about "Vagabond" is the objective, evenhanded approach of the director towards her "heroine". She neither praises nor condemns her chosen "lifestyle", she simply observes it - and she observes it so well that this feels like the work of someone who's had first-hand experiences with similar people and surroundings. To be perfectly honest, the film doesn't have much psychological (or sociological) depth, and it can get boring at times while you're watching it, but right after it's over, you know that you've seen a good movie. (***)

Perhaps Sandrine Bonnaire's "Mona" represents my greatest fear -- of being alone and broke. That is why she has remained with me for almost twenty years. Remembering the first time I met her is nostalgic to me. I walked the roads of rural France with her and liked her for not begging to be liked. Perhaps it was love more than like. Her journey made me tearful. I mourned the inevitability of her existence.

Such is Agnes Varda's talent that the movie affected me so deeply -- my favourite movie of hers, by the way. The landscapes are so vivid, the dead tree branches so bare yet so brittle in the harsh elements. The compositions possess a fixed, absolute nature that conveys a hopeless destiny. There is no offensive beauty in Mona's destitution, there is merely purity.

Because so few motion pictures resonate with this much intensity and feeling for me, I go through periods in which I feel like I'm wasting my life away seeing so many, but when I consider the alternative, Mona's choices suddenly feel real to me.

Extraordinary in every sense.

Make a gallant effort to see VAGABOND. It will touch you deeply and wake you from the slumber of indifference.