Vagabond (The Criterion Collection)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Francis Balchère, Jean-Louis Perletti, Sandrine Bonnaire, Setti Ramdane, Urbain CausseDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Color, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 105 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-05-16
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Vagabond (The Criterion Collection)
Movie Review: VAGABOND
Summary: 5 Stars
The film opens on the scene of a bare vineyard, it's winter, and a worker is collecting vines off the ground after pruning. He suddenly comes upon a woman, sprawled dead in the frost covered ditch, nothing but an old dirty blanket on her back. Her face is contorted with pain from the cold she suffered. Her hair looks almost gray from being frozen.The police come to investigate, she's got no identification with her.
But as the film progresses we learn her name is Mona, short for Simone. In flash backs we see her traveling like a leaf on the wind, never staying in one place for too long, hitching rides, and pitching her tent. Bumming cigarettes, and getting water and bread (sometimes dope) from kind strangers, a few she gets to know, but they never really figure out who she is. But, they agree as they talk to the camera, she's someone they'll never forget.
The film takes place during winter, Mona says she likes to travel then because there aren't that many people out, and it's easier to get a ride. Those who she meets, are mostly good, but some bad. She experiences the perils of a young woman traveling alone. Hunger, cold, rape... She isn't a naive street urchin, but a gritty character, tough and defiant.
I found Mona, so endearing and painfully haunting. I became more and more sad, to know she had died. And when that tragic moment came, I couldn't help but cry a little. Sandrine Bonnaire made her seem so real. And I love how the movie was shot. Told in flashbacks, by the people who had known her, however briefly. They speak directly to the camera. A very powerful film, very poignant and absolutely haunting.
Filmed in Nimes, France. In the stark landscape of mid-winter. Anges Varda's masterpiece. Sandrine Bonnaire won the Cesar award for best actress. Even though it's sad and ends (and begins) with tragedy, I am definitely going watch it again.
This film deserves no less than five stars!
Summary of Vagabond (The Criterion Collection)
Sandrine Bonnaire plays Mona, a vagabond found dead from exposure in the opening scene, whose final few months we follow in flashback. Traipsing through the French countryside in winter, Mona skips along from one situation to another, more interested in survival and sustenance than making any kind of permanent connection, resolute in her individuality. But she touches the lives of those around her, from a cultured professor who sees in her a romantic symbol of social freedom to a farming couple who offers her their way of life with a plot of land to a widow whose stiffness is mellowed by her directness. Yet she remains enigmatic as everyone projects their own fantasies on the alienated figure who meets every obstacle with a retreat to the road. Agnes Varda's chilly view weaves in commentaries and direct address of the bystanders and bit players whose lives are touched by Mona, but they ultimately reveal more about the speaker than the drifter. By the end of the film we don't know much more about her beyond her steely immutability and disconnection, and Varda is resolute in her no-apologies, no-excuses portrait. It's an assured film rich in detail with an enigma at the center. --Sean Axmaker
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