Cléo from 5 to 7

Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer (Corinne Marchand) set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy.

In the opening minutes of the film, Cléo learns that she may have an incurable and ultimately fatal cancer. This knowledge drives her to wander aimlessly through the next ninety minutes of her life, frighteningly aware of how empty and fragile this life seems when death encroaches—incarnated on the streets of Paris in such images as carcasses of cattle in a butcher shop and a street performer who swallows frogs alive, and in broadcasts from the war in Algeria.

Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and cameos by French New Wave icons Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

Part of our French Film Festival, supported by the Albertine Cinematheque, a program of FACE Foundation and Villa Albertine, with support from the CNC / Centre National du Cinema, and SACEM / Fonds Culturel Franco-Américain.

Film website: www.janusfilms.com/films/1038

In French with English subtitles