So elegant, so stylish, so extremely and eternally cool. In broad strokes Agnès Varda’s second feature film sounds like a downer: Cléo Victoire (Corinne Marchand), a singer in Paris, nervously awaits the results of a biopsy. In more specific terms it sounds rather uneventful: unfolding in real-time, Cléo spends her day faffing about – going to a cafe, trying on clothes, hanging out in her apartment with friends, walking the streets, catching cabs. But the sheer delightfulness of Cléo from 5 to 7 comes down to execution, its form and aesthetic born from the coolest cinema movement of them all: the French New Wave, to which the legendary Varda was a key contributor.
The amazing film noir genre of the 40s and 50s competes with the FNW in coolness and sass, with bangin’ crime stories and a more unified aesthetic. But the French rabble rousers (many of whom started out as critics) tossed out the rulebook and radicalised the medium’s form and grammar, rocking its foundations and injecting into cinematic storytelling wild new possibilities. Cléo from 5 to 7 is one of the breezier New Wave classics, cosmopolitan to the core, tuned to the buzz and thrum of the city – which is Paris circa the early 60s. C’est magnifique!
