Vagabond, directed by Agnes Varda is the dark disturbing story of a female drifter named Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire). The film opens as Mona's frozen body is found in a drainage ditch and proceeds to tell her story in a series of flashbacks and semi-documentary style "interviews" with the people who have known Mona during the last few weeks of her life. Mona is a distant, independent and not-very-likeable woman who goes from place to place, living where she can and with anyone who will take her in. Mona's true nature remains a puzzle, both to those who thought they knew her, and to the audience. As the movie progresses it becomes clear that no one knew the true Mona and she, because of her aloofness and essential coldness, provided a canvas for those she met to write upon. Who Mona really was, and what she thought remains ambiguous. Sandrine Bonnaire is excellent as Mona, making an unappealing and cold character interesting and intriguing. Director Agnes Varda began her career as a still photographer. This beginning is evident in her elegant framing of the film. She has an instinctive awareness of and a photographer's eye for visual detail which makes the film cold, bleak, and aridly beautiful. Internationally acclaimed, Vagabond is Varda's most successful film. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
Review
A study in time, memory and compassion, Agnès Varda's Vagabond (Sans Toit Ni Loi) opens with the death of its main character, the perpetual drifter Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire), and proceeds to piece together the events of her life until the fatal moment. Though there are elements of mock-documentary and even murder mystery in the film, Varda uses the devices primarily to expose their inadequacies in "investigating" her subject. Ultimately, the omnipresent, objective viewpoint of the director's camera tells us more about Mona's disposessed, inert lifestyle than any of the interviews. Despite its grim outcome, the film doesn't wield any particular feminist or political agenda. As with much of Varda's work, the approach is more personal-philosophical: the director seems to be suggesting that the the romantic ideal of a free spirit is a farce; instead, the unlimited freedoms of modern culture leave aimless, displaced young people like Mona callous and emotionally void. Bonnaire has the ability to be captivating in her nihilism; without her, Varda's elliptical structure might have been merely frustrating. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Joel Fosse - Paulo; Patrick Lepcynski - David; Yahiaoui Assouna - Assoun (the vineyard worker); Jacques Berthier - Le petit monsieur blen-mis; Daniel Bos - Le demolisseur; Katy Champaud - la jeune fille e la pompe; Dominique Durand - le premier motard; Henri Fridani; Pierre Imbert - le garagiste; Setti Ramdane; Raymond Roulle - le vieux aux allumettes; Patrick Schmit - le camionneur; Patrick Sokol - le jaune homme au sandwich
Credit
Agnès Varda - Director, Patricia Mazuy - Editor, Agnès Varda - Editor, Joanna Bruzdowicz - Composer (Music Score), Patrick Blossier - Cinematographer, Oury Milshtein - Producer, Jean Bauer - Set Designer, Anne Violet - Set Designer, Agnès Varda - Screenwriter
Vagabond (French: Sans toit ni loi, "without roof or law") is a 1985drama film directed by Agnès Varda, featuring Sandrine Bonnaire. It describes the story of a young woman, a vagabond, who wanders through French wine country one winter.
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 flashes back to the woman, Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire) walking along the roadside, hiding from the police 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.
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.
The title
The original French title, Sans toit ni loi, is a pun on a common French idiom, "Sans foi ni loi" - "Without faith or law." The near-literal title, "Without Roof or Rule" was coined by film scholar Dennis Bingham, in order to give it some of the wordplay effect of the original title.[citation needed] The film has never been released under the title "Without Roof or Rule."
Daguerréotypes (1976) ·Mural Murals (1981) ·Jane B. Par Agnes V. (1988) ·The Young Girls Turn 25 (1993) ·The Universe of Jacques Demy (1995) ·The Gleaners and I (2000) ·The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (2002) ·Quelques veuves de Noirmoutier (2006) ·The Beaches of Agnès (2008)
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