Vagabond - Criterion Collection (1986)

Sandrine Bonnaire plays Mona, a vagabond found dead from exposure in the opening scene, whose final few months we follow in flashback. Traipsing through the French countryside in winter, Mona skips along from one situation to another, more interested in survival and sustenance than making any kind of permanent connection, resolute in her individuality. But she touches the lives of those around her, from a cultured professor who sees in her a romantic symbol of social freedom to a farming couple who offers her their way of life with a plot of land to a widow whose stiffness is mellowed by her directness. Yet she remains enigmatic as everyone projects their own fantasies on the alienated figure who meets every obstacle with a retreat to the road. Agnes Varda's chilly view weaves in commentaries and direct address of the bystanders and bit players whose lives are touched by Mona, but they ultimately reveal more about the speaker than the drifter. By the end of the film we don't know much more about her beyond her steely immutability and disconnection, and Varda is resolute in her no-apologies, no-excuses portrait. It's an assured film rich in detail with an enigma at the center. --Sean Axmaker Amazon.com

captivating performance by Sandrine Bonnaire

Perhaps undefinable charisma might best describe Bonnaire in this film. Varda directs with a sure hand.
Film stays with you long after it's over, just as the best ones usually do. The French have a knack for this type of layered storytelling and aren't afraid to do it at their own chosen pace.

Sandrine Bonnaire isn't the most beautiful actress to have ever appeared in films, and yet what she does here makes her far more appealing and interesting than so many women who are way better looking. That's why I say it's not easy to pin-point her charisma, but it certainly can't be denied. June 23, 2007

Without Roof or Rule

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Do you want to know how Absolute Freedom looks like? In Agnes Varda's film it is a frozen in a ditch young woman, dirty, lonely - a vagabond, without roof or rule. Why did she end up in that ditch? Why did she choose to be alone, to drift aimlessly in the wintry country side? Does being free always mean the encounters with violence, hunger, fear, and cold? The girl (we learn that her name was Mona, that she used to be a secretary in a big city) deeply touches the lives of the people she meets on the road. She is not likable but why can't all of them forget her, why did she touch their lives so deeply? Agnès Varda does not answer the questions and she does not judge her anti-heroine (star making performance by 18 years old Sandrine Bonnaire); she tries to understand her and she mourns the life that was promising once, that supposed to have meaning but ended up so tragically and abruptly.

4.5/5 or 9/10 September 13, 2006

Anti-romantic heroine in rural France

This is a very well made film, with some excellent camera work. Its script also manages to avoid the "noble beggar" cliche by showing Mona not as a romantic homeless rebel but a seriously maladjusted young woman who cannot stand the society but at the same time craves its most trivial attractions (the TV, pop music, alcohol, dope, etc.) Her character does not arouse sympathy or even compassion - she is ungrateful, lazy, selfish and dirty. Still, she is a sort of enigma, and that's what is holding the film together. Just the same, my reaction at the end of the movie was "so what?" This is the reason behind the four stars rating. August 25, 2006

Cliche, French style

The drifter, the young one nobody understands, the free spirit, the girl you should never fall in love with...

Puh-lease! This has been rehashed so many times in songs and movies of the 50s, 60, and 70s that by the time this came out, it felt like a relic from a museum. June 28, 2004

a very interesting film.

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

This film begins with the discovery of a dead young hobo woman in a ditch. The rest of the film is a retrospective of the events leading to her death as told to the police by people who had seen her. The film style reminded me of the Japanese film "Rashomon." The original French title of the film is "Sans toit ni loi" which means "Without roof nor law"

The Criterion DVD has no special features. May 25, 2004

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