Vagabond (film)
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| Vagabond | |
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 Film poster |
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| 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 |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
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.
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[edit] Plot
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 her misery in a ditch.
[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.
The soundtrack also provides a chilling melody during her travels. There is only one melody that starts playing during her walks alone around the countryside. Besides this, everything else in the film is devoid of background music. This formal quality, or lack thereof, evokes much confusion and chaos onto the screen, mirroring her uncertainty throughout the film. Mona is a lone figure on the road, and this image is magnified when the music plays in the background whenever she is seen alone on the road. The discordant music that provides the only soundtrack in the film foreshadows Mona’s tragic end because it makes it seem that whenever Mona is traveling, she feels the depression swallow her because the melancholic music swells in the background.
[edit] Road Film
Vagabond fits under the Postmodern European Road Genre as a film centering around women on the road. Women in particular in the Postmodern European Road Genre are often seen as nomadic figures trying to break out of society's constraints.[1] Because of this, Mona's character can be seen as confirming to the role of women in this European Road Genre because her actions reflect those of women in other films in this genre. Throughout the film she tries to runaway from her responsibilities and even explains how she hated her job as a secretary. This desire to seek freedom by going on the road is exemplary of the Postmodern European Road Genre's concepts because characters in films within this genre often try to escape society's restraints by finding freedom on the road. However, the European Road Genre also explains how women on the road are often alone and troubled figures, and Mona's character experiences these exact emotions.
[edit] Awards
The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1985.
[edit] External links
- Vagabond at the Internet Movie Database
- Vagabond at Allmovie
- Criterion Collection essay by Sandy Flitterman-Lewis
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| Preceded by The Year of the Quiet Sun |
Golden Lion winner 1985 |
Succeeded by The Green Ray |
