#115: Cléo from 5 to 7
Part of the Top 150 Films series
Cléo from 5 to 7 is a lie. A beautiful, avant-garde lie, but a lie nonetheless. The plot concerns “Cléo” Victoire as she waits from 5pm until 6:30pm to hear the results of a cancer test. In the intervening 90 minutes (mostly in real time, though the editing works marvels to always leave the audience at a slight disjoint from the action), Cléo visits a fortune teller, cries in a café, purchases a hat, encounters a soldier on leave from the then-ongoing Algerian War, before finally receiving her diagnosis. All of the above are relatively banal events, but through Varda’s direction, they become Ulyssean odysseys, expanding our horizons to existentialism, French feminism in the ’60s, and — most significantly — the place of women in society at large. Feather light and with a winning energy despite its subject matter, Cléo may be a lie, but universal truths emerge upon viewing.
