Vagabond

My fascination with this film's narrative structure may enable me to idealize this film as time passes. This is narrative as a way to ask questions about character and theme, rather than merely supplying an explanation. The conversation with the farmer about "movement" is one of my favorite dialogue exchanges in recent memory. Complex performance by Bonnaire never allows for an easy emotional experience - but this is its strength. It's like Rosetta by way of Rashomon. Great film.

"You choose total freedom and you got total loneliness"

I watched this while lying in bed sick with covid and it struck a major chord with me. The whole day and night after watching it, all I could think about was the idea of what value people provide each other. When you remove factors like job and possessions, what value do you provide to other people? What do they provide to you? And even though the ending of the story is the first thing you see, it was still a gut punch to arrive back at it.

Of all the characters the one known least takes center stage, and the seeming identities of those around her unfold after reflections through her, spinning back stories about their own lives: wanting to be alive, wanting dope, wanting to exploit, or that freedom is not possible because of the loneliness. All narratives and identifications fail. For the young woman escape from samsara was not possible, but this movie seems to showcase an attempt.

A persistently enigmatic girl refuses to be sedentary, but the universe through which she wanders proves a cold one, even when she comes across those who want to maintain at least a posture of warmth: she suffers, and eventually she dies. Not a barrel of laughs by any means, but this affecting movie is really a superior example of its type, with a genuinely complex yet “natural” way of approaching “issues” through characterisation, narrative and an unusual composition of fiction and reality.

I believe that in a good movie you can see a reflection of your own soul, and this movie talked to me. You need some realizations in your life and this movie offered plenty. She was called a drifter, a dreamer. No goals but the goal-less road. This was my first Varda movie and it lived true to the director's name. The cinematography was really well done and it reflects 80s France perfectly. Though Bonnaire is a selfish prick, it's really hard not to understand and feel her nothingness. A drifter

Unique storytelling centered around a unique character. Atonal music sets the mood right where it ought to be: exploratory. This is not some typical tragedy of poverty. It's about free will, introspection, and the destiny of society at large. Agnés Varda is world-class.

Minimalistic atmosphere, modest settings and simple story. Manages to make itself likable but not too much.

Fuck Into the Wild!

29 Aralik 12 & It is not about purposeless, blind nihilism. It is a passive resistance to patriarchy. No man understands him including the philosopher shepherd because her bane is not about the space of philosophy. It is more about sentiments. In the whole film, she is looking for herself & someone else who can understand her. She wants to tell/ understand. She wants to find a reason for living (at least not dying). BUT all the search for meaning's have to stuck in the absurd.

My first film by Agnes Varda, and I was entranced. I loved the narrative conceit by which everything we know about the drifter Mona is filtered through other characters' biases and desires. But Mona is so cutoff that she remains unknowable. So much is done with a setting that is primarily dun and gray. The screen fills with textures and patterns: furrowed brambly fields, scratchy wool, weathered plaster walls. One of the most beautiful winter films I've seen.

Very dry and European. There's something about the starkness of Mona's series of predicaments, and the coldness of how the film addresses the moral concerns around each of them. But this would've sat better with me if it had honestly been funnier, addressing her life (and death) as a cosmic joke, but instead comes across as tonally unsatisfying, not to mention a bit dull.

An absorbing character study that refuses to pin down anything about its heroine or the world around her, supported by an evocative, unique structure and an absolutely incredible lead performance.

A suffocation. Freedom is the end goal for Mona, but her life becomes a Di Manes, a walkabout borne of some external judgement, perhaps of penance, undeserved. “You’ve read too much trash. You’re a dreamer” is said. Same is true of all of us - Varda’s divine gift asks us first to love and sympathize with those we’re socially manufactured to despise. It’s the very definition of common grace - and maybe, a release from the cycle of psychic drowning Mona inhabits.

This is really well done, and Bonnaire is so good in it (and perfectly cast.) I always admire Varda's restraint--she could easily play this a lot more strongly and I think it would be a lesser film, but she leaves a lot unsaid and unseen and unexplained. I suspect I might revise this upward at some point, as it might be one of those movies I'm thinking about for a while.

A recollection of the wanderer that exists to connect with it’s natural surroundings unbound by societal structure. However, it is clear the realities of human life still exist as well as the darker impulses that comes with an isolated freedom. A solid portrait.

Bonnaire is all fierce negation. She lives outside with some scant belongings and a tent, occasionally working small jobs or accepting charity, but never really asking for anything. She frequently takes what is needed. You don't really know why she lives this way, except for some vague hints about having disliked school and work. She seems to refuse to be an occupant of any proscribed role, doing as she wants and not doing as she doesn't want.

She is 100% taker, 0% giver to the world and people around her. And yet you somehow want to have a bit of sympathy for this person who to some extent might be simply playing the cards she was dealt.

positivement sarrautean

A surface simplicity that's created by an expert non judgmental filmmaker. There is little explanation but plenty of space for reflection.

Such a visually rich experience, Varda's camera regularly floating by Mona to dwell on empty spaces, brick walls, and broken-down machinery. This imagery builds on itself throughout the film, creating a deep sense of dislocation, even as it continues to give us a clearer sense of Mona's fundamental human dignity.

A great character study about what might compel a person to keep moving. Varda's sense of composition yields many wonderful shots, and Bonnaire, only 17 years old, crafts a highly memorable performance.

Maratona Agnès Varda em honra de seus 90 anos completados hoje. Filme #2 Varda aqui emprega toda a filosofia francesa do século XX para dar vida à mulher andarilha que sonhamos ser, o uso da música nas transições entre um plano e outro que se liga por elementos comuns dando transitoriedade à protagonista é particularmente brilhante. DVD Obras-primas do cinema.

I didn't really like that the beginning spoilers the end in this one, and the photography isn't very good, but "Vagabond" has Sandrine Bonnaire as a very interesting character; a primadonna drifter, biting every hand that feeds her and facing the grim consequences. Varda defies us to sympathize with her protagonist though her anti-social attitude is in no way glorified.

03 Gener 2016 - M'ha deixat una mica dividit. Per un costat em semblava un personatge irritant i desagradable, i la seva actuació no em convencia. Per l'altre, em desesperava i, per tant, m'afectava; potser em transmetia l'angoixa i la confusió de la seva situació, a estones convençuda, a estones destrossada. No m'agradaven gaire -potser té a veure amb que la pel·lícula té 30 anys- aquests monòlegs dels testimonis, amb els fosos de cop, i no sabia si la música tenia alguna funció.

watched: 2015, 2023

very interesting but a little too dry at times for my tastes. well-compiled shattered narrative intersperses short story fragments with documentary-style interviews to show us inside the world of a listless, homeless woman who has no hope of fitting in anywhere both due to the patriarchal forces of the outside world and her own bottomless apathy. i don't know what was up with that fad of using modernist music, it makes everything sound gross and boring. but other than that...very good portrait.

A beautiful portrait of a bleak south France in the 1980s. Often seems unfocused, but Varda knows exactly what she's doing, leading to one of the most devastating endings I've ever seen, even when you know exactly what's going to happen.

#786

The 80s atmosphere, especially the music, can be a little distracting, but it's a small blip in a very touching examination of the desolation one can experience on the margins of society. Despite the sad content this avoids being depressing by viewing things as events in a lived life rather than dwelling on the inevitable end.

Incredibly compelling and engrossing.

731

Aimless wandering and survival. For a time. Hella depressing.

Character study just isn't as cool when the lead character is as obnoxious as the bum featured here, even when she's played by somebody as cute as Bonnaire. It's different, but it's not very engaging or insightful. Moreover, we see what's supposed to be a stiff at the beginning, but you can clearly see the "corpse"'s heartbeat pumping away in one of her carotids. This sort of obvious falldown in attention to detail just shouldn't be condoned in a movie that's sold as some kind of "art" film

674

A decent film from an acting and writing standpoint, but the incessant fade outs slow the momentum and the film starts to meander after about an hour.

# 648