Cleo 5 to 7 by Agnes Varda

The shackle of the gaze.

“Cleo 5 to 7” is a criminally underrated gem of the French new wave. It uniquely

takes place almost in real time as the main character spends the evening anxiously
waiting for her doctor to confirm that she has cancer. Cleo (played to perfection by
Corinne Marchand) begins the film at 5pm at a fortune teller’s apartment where the
whole plot of the movie is basically summarised – she has artistic talent, she has an
inattentive lover, she will meet a talkative man and finally, she is condemned to
death. Cleo leaves the fortune teller surer than ever of her doom and is confronted
by her mortality through every moment of the films 90mintue run time as she walks
panic stricken through the streets of Paris.
Cleo is a pop star. Not popular enough to be recognised on sight but her name rings
a bell and her music is on the radio and jukeboxes. Her songwriter and producer
don’t think she has any talent - an opinion they don’t mind expressing to her face.
Her superstitious maid who seems to be her only true support system is a strangely
dominant figure in her life. Cleo has imbibed her superstitions and adheres strictly
to her advice. The beautiful popstar doll image thrust on her by these people is
something she seems to have long accepted. She looks at herself in mirrors almost
non-stop to reaffirm her looks and consoles herself with her beautiful face. “Ugliness
is a kind of death” she says.
She bends backwards to fit into all these boxes, like many other women in society.
“Another caprice!” says the producer, as she struggles under the demands of all these
characters she has adopted. However, a radical moment of truth occurs that causes
her masks slip and become noticeable to her. The songwriter has written for her a
“revolutionary” piece which is basically an ode to death on the day where she is more
conscious of her mortality that ever before. She is moved to tears and, in a tantrum,
storms out of the house and back into the street, where she says out her epiphany
as she takes off the hat she had worn to piss off her maid. Cleo has suddenly realised
that she barely exists. She looks at herself only to search for what someone else may
notice. She is all too conscious of the eyes that follow her through the streets and
what they may be thinking so much so that she had begun to see herself exclusively
through their eyes. This 1962 portrait of a woman still rings true in today’s society
especially now when you’re not only being watched by the few hundred people in the
street but (thanks to your “beauty”) by tens and hundreds of thousands people in
the virtual world, all with an idea of you. And when you achieve success in-spite of
this or usually thanks to this, it blinds and traps one in a way that is hardly
noticeable to the prisoner. This self-consciousness ultimately turns to a reluctance
to confront fears and experience life as it demands to be experienced. This epiphany
may have been had by Cleo before and, like many epiphanies we have in our lifetime,
wilted away to be forgotten upon contact with the brutal and imposing reality of
things. But today, it promises to stick because Cleo has no hiding place and the
possibility of her own death stares down at her indifferently.
She walks away from this realisation recharged it seems but not in a Hollywood-
montage-sequence type of way. The subtleness and expertise with which this change
is handled is the greatest feat in the film.
Previously she cannot stand to hear her voice on the radio the technical lapses are
too evident to her (perhaps the voice of her producer mocking and plaguing her) even
though; it is in fact on the radios and the lady in the cab is loving it. Now however,
she walks into a café full of people to play her own music on a jukebox. Her music is
dismissed as noise by one of the customers but the comment doesn’t seem to affect
her as much as it might have at the beginning of the film or just simply; as much as
she might have feared. She walks round with a zeal to experience and become the
observer and not just the observed. As she walks, she is still accosted by the intrusive
gaze of others but she now stares back at them boldly through her shades. She goes
to her friend who poses as a nude model. It seems she remembers her since she also
feels naked in the presence of all the eyes ripping her to shreds on the street. Cleo
doesn’t miraculously transform thanks to her revelation but she starts to see what
she’s scared of and the path to becoming better therefore starts to open up. As the
lady cab driver in the film who is definitely an example of breaking away from others
opinions: facing fears is dangerous but the rewards lay in the adventure itself and it
seems to be a more than satisfying reward.

In a comedic short silent film she sees with her friend; a man is waving goodbye to
his girl and as he watches her leave, puts on his shades. Her white dress changes
into black and she is attacked with a water hose and carried away by a shady looking
figure and so he walks off crying. In a surrealist turn he takes of the shades “that
made everything look so dark” and all the characters change back into white clothing.
The water hose changes into a harmless rope and the kidnapper into a goofy
paramedic. What’s more he realises he still has time to rescue her from the clowns
which he swiftly does. This so perfectly captures the idea of the film. When other
people see us they see more than just us. They see ideas and forms that are from
their past and have nothing to do with us or in truth any real person. And if we adopt
their own thoughts of us as the defining template for our lives, life equally becomes
an unreal idea.
She goes to a park where she meets a soldier which is really the defining moment of
the film. In the midst of getting lost in time she meets the interesting and talkative
Antoine she had been fated to meet. Her usual shield for such men who approach
her is missing and it seems for those final moments of the film a whole new world
starts to open for Cleo. He is able to brighten her day to the point where she receives
the news that she does indeed have cancer, her biggest fear, but when the news
lands it doesn’t seem to knock her out. Even though his train leaves in less than 2
hours she knows from her experience of the last two hours that they still have time
together and more worlds can continue to open for them.
Agnes Varda may not be put in the same esteemed category of her male counterparts
like Godard, Truffaut or even her husband Jacques demy thanks to the curse of the
“female” director label. But the poetic nature of this film stands out as a masterpiece
of the 60’s new wave era. The beauty of the shots and the palpable energy of life in
the streets captured by ever-moving camera helps to paint a vivid picture of a whole
world that is true enough for the audience to live in. Corinne does and unbelievable
job in communicating Cleo’s fear of death simply through her eyes and the whole
film rests solidly on her shoulders. There is a lot of hope at the end of Cleo 5 to 7 and
it is the kind of movie that pushes you to experience life just a little more in many
ways that a shady essay could never capture. The amount of truth in the seemingly
mundane things of life that are presented on screen lends one to take a closer look
at our own seemingly mundane lives. Although there may not be a fear of impending
death to serve as a seal for whatever epiphanies I may have gotten from this movie
in my every moment, the world of Cleo is sure to live vividly in my mind just like it is
sure to do in the mind of Antoine who will show all his soldier mates the beautiful
photos of Cleo.