“The first fully achieved feature by the woman who would become the premiere female director of her generation.” (Molly Haskell)
Agnès Varda eloquently and gorgeously captures 1960s Paris with this enchanting portrait of a young pop singer (Corinne Marchand) at loose ends as she awaits the results of a biopsy. A chronicle of her evening wandering the city as she confronts the possibility of illness and death, Cléo from 5 to 7, Varda’s second feature, is justly seen as one of her most important works. An imaginative mix of vivid vérité and heartful melodrama at the heart of the French New Wave, it features a score by Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina. Varda told The New Yorker that she persuaded Godard to take off his trademark sunglasses on camera because “I thought he had very beautiful eyes.”