This was a very tres chic film. Very similar to other French New Wave films like Breathless. At least I saw it in the car scenes. This is the first Agnes Varda film I've seen and she doesn't depart from the New Wave aesthetic; the jump cuts, the self reflexive authorial voice, the black and white, the dialogue about between characters, all make it a New Wave film.
I read the review by Ebert and I wasn't satisfied. Mostly, and I don't want to be cursed by referrencing a dead person, it was summary. It talked briefly about the life of Varda recounting how he had several dinners, etc. with her. But he didn't really analyze the film in any meaningful way. I wanted more and was disappointed.
As with most, if not all, I haven't seen every French New Wave film, and furthermore I think it's probably impossible to view all of them, Cleo was heavy on dialogue. Some of the details I didn't get. Such as when she plays her song in Cafe and it is called "noise." Otherwise the film follows a simple format, merely following Cleo around Paris as she shops for hats. The major turning point in the film is when she gets fed up with her songwriter and piano player. She storms out of her sparse apartment.
The entire movie centers around Cleo finding out whether she has cancer or not. In the end she does. The movie ends on a sour note. I liked the film for it's style. Several shots were good. Not great though. Definitely not Godard's jump cuts in Breathless. There was also some cross cutting of various elements of Cleo; like her hat, her wig, her apartment, her piano player. I wasn't sure what these meant. I suppose it was a montage sequence about Cleo's life. Those were the most interesting shots of the film.
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