Vagabond (film)

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Vagabond
Film poster
Directed by	Agnès Varda
Produced by	Oury Milshtein
Written by	Agnès Varda
Starring	Sandrine Bonnaire Setti Ramdane
Music by	Joanna Bruzdowicz Fred Chichin
Cinematography	Patrick Blossier
Editing by	Patricia Mazuy Agnès Varda
Release date(s)	September, 1985 (premiere at Venice Film Festival) December 4, 1985 May 16, 1986
Running time	105 min.
Language	French
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Vagabond is a film directed by Agnès Varda, released in 1985, featuring Sandrine Bonnaire. The original French title is Sans toit ni loi, which means "without roof or law". It describes the story of a young woman, a vagabond, who is found frozen in a ditch.

1 Plot
2 Style
3 Awards
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film begins with the contorted body of the woman, covered in frost. From this image, an unseen and unheard interviewer puts the camera on the last men to see her and the ones who found her. The action then goes backwards, to see the woman, Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire) walking along the roadside, hiding from cops and trying to get a ride. Along her journey she meets and takes up with other vagabonds such as herself as well as a Tunisian vineyard worker, a family of goat farmers, a professor researching trees, and a maid who envies what she perceives to be a beautiful and passionate lifestyle. Mona explains to one of her temporary companions that at one time she had an office job and did very well for herself, but she became unsettled with the way she was living—choosing instead to wander the country free from any responsibility, picking up what she could to survive as she goes. Throughout the film, Mona's condition seems to become progressively worse until she finally falls where we first saw her, frozen and entrenched in misery in her ditch.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Style

The film combines straightforward narrative scenes, in which we see Mona living her life, with pseudo-documentary sequences in which people who knew Mona turn to the camera and comment on what they remember about her. Significant events are sometimes left unshown, so that the viewer must piece the information together to gain a full picture.

Throughout the entire film, Mona never speaks to the camera about herself and reveals very little about where she has come from and where she is going. The audience can only guess at what she is thinking or feeling by observing her reactions to other people and events. She is not sanctified; she is snide and snippy toward many of the people she meets and tends to be ungrateful; for example, when Mona tells the goat farmer that wants a piece of land to grow potatoes on and support herself, he gives her land and a small camper, but she does not farm it, preferring to sit around and let it go to waste.