Cleo 5-7 Bluray Review
From Cléo de Agnès Varda’s opening credits 5-7, you know this will be an elegant and important film from the French New Wave, a period in film history dominated by François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.
In the color credits sequence Cléo (Corine Marchand), a young and beautiful Parisian, is telling her future and the Tarot cards confirm her worst fears while waiting for the results of a doctor to detect if she suffers from an incurable disease.
Photography shifts to the crisp, handheld monochrome style that is typical of French films of the time. Varda creates an almost documentary feel as we spend the next 90 minutes following Cléo, a famous pop singer, through the elegant streets of 1960s Paris in real time.
Cléo is very superstitious and sees omens of death everywhere, his maid encourages him, advising him not to wear the new hat he bought because it is Tuesday, not to drink coffee and to avoid cats! Thats not all; the movie is divided into 13 chapters, so it really seems like his destiny is doomed. Still, try to look on the bright side by thinking, “Ugliness is a kind of death. As long as I am beautiful, I am alive.” How French.
We soon discover that Cléo’s songs are going out of style and, despite the efforts of Michel “Windmills of Your Mind” Legrand (who makes a cameo as her composer) to provide a new hit, she is fed up with the success and its empty existence. Her current lover visits her briefly, but their busy lives don’t give them enough time to even kiss!
Corine Marchand is excellent as the spoiled but tragic rich girl and delivers a poignant performance that brings great depth to lines like, “Everybody pampers me, nobody loves me!” At all times, his tragedy is put into context by the conflict in Algeria; she is not the only person facing imminent death.
Don’t be put off by the bleak theme; Cléo from 5 to 7 is a lush and very elegant film that benefits from many lighter moments. Not least a fantastic parody of the silent comedy, where a man in dark sunglasses thinks he saw his lover hit by a car, only to find that due to his darkened vision he is looking at the wrong girl, “Damn sunglasses. dark sun, they make everything look so good black! “Indeed.