Vogelfrei

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.

There are many different reasons to watch a film. I personally enjoy casual get out the six pack of beer type movies and I appreciate sincere great film art. Vagabond is one of the greatest films I have ever seen. I was drawn into this deeply tragic tale from the very opening scene with the wonderful music and cinematography. The documentary style used as a device to tell the story of Mona was bold and very appropriate to convey the depth of the impact this person had on the other characters in the film.

The acting of Ms. Bonnaire convinced me to care about this deeply troubled character and the isolated existential life she led. I personally have met in my own life people living in this way and I am always perplexed that I can not understand what is going on in that person's head. This film is and example of what makes great art. It tells a story that is universal and yet very personal. See this film. (10 out of 10).

Someone moving through life in a way so counter to the norm, taking the road less traveled and often so vulnerable doing so, is like a mirror held up to humanity. Some react with incredible generosity and try to give her a leg up, and others are harsh or prey on her. To its credit, the film doesn't glamorize this character and frankly she's often hard to like, and yet Varda has a way of bringing out empathy, a big part of which is suspending judgment. It didn't all work for me, like the maid with problems of her own addressing the camera, and it's a bleak tale, but the profoundly deep kindness of the director radiates like a beacon. Sandrine Bonnaire gave a fine performance too.

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.

This is only my second proper Varda film: I've only watched her documentary on her late husband (director Jacques Demy), JACQUOT DE NANTES (1991) and her ode to nickelodeon days ONE HUNDRED AND ONE NIGHTS OF SIMON CINEMA (1995); I do have 4 more titles by her on VHS but, alas, only in French i.e. with no English subtitles!

Despite being past her vintage, this is a remarkable piece of work: affecting but unsentimental, vivid rather than depressing. It deals with the last few days of a vagrant girl (a member of the working-class who got fed up with her vapid lifestyle and decided to find herself again 'on the road'), played with candor and great passion by Sandrine Bonnaire - a deserving Cesar Award recipient (the film itself emerged triumphant at Cannes). Still, the film doesn't romanticize her existence at all - the rejections and abuses she suffers throughout her journey, the abject poverty, the bitter cold, indeed her entire unwholesome environment - and, in fact, has all the air of being a story gleaned from the headlines (fittingly given a cine-verite' approach by Varda, providing intermittent interrogations by the police of the people who saw her last and one particular character addressing the audience directly at several stages during the film!).

Necessarily episodic in nature, the film does goes on a tad too long (especially the interlude with the Arabic immigrant, who actually plays himself!) but it basically covers the gamut of emotions, while also containing an unexpected - but most welcome - spurt of irreverence in the scenes involving a senile rich old lady, the messy (and vaguely Surrealist) Wine Festival towards the very end, and extending even to the droll final credit roll! Like a number of their early releases, the Criterion DVD is unfortunately bare-bones.