CALIFORNIA MOVIE JOURNAL (January 2022)

[Chris Knipp]

CLÉO FROM 7 TO 7 (Agnès Varda 1961). Another current Nouvelle Vague Criterion Channel offering of a famous film I'd never previously seen. Varda was originally trained as a photographer and the richly contrasty black and white images full of busy Paris streets filmed with fluency and verve are what counts most to me in this film. They recall the work of William Klein; the images are intense and stunning. Structured as a real-time (minus 30-minutes) coverage of two hours in the life of statuesque young blonde pop singer and minor celebrity Flora "Cléo" Victoire (Corinne Marahand) - the usual time when Parisian boys met their girlfriends - who is afraid she may have fatal stomach cancer and at the end of this period she's going to a hospital to get the results of a biopsy, and she fears the worst. Nice moments include seeing a young Michel Legrand informally play and sing and glimpsing a crisp Buster Keaton-style silent film featuring Godard, Anna Karina, Eddie Constantine, and others. Until the last segment, it's not a lot more than the nice visuals, plus Cléo's anxiety. After a lot of ego and fear of dying, finally Cléo casually meets Antoine (Antoine Bourseiller), a soft-spoken, preternaturally articulate soldier on temporary leave from the Algerian war, whose company and conversation have a transformative effect. Kael described this as the very rare female-helmed film clearly different from one made by a man.