Customer Reviews

Vagabond (The Criterion Collection)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The film opens on the scene of a bare vineyard, it's winter, and a worker is collecting vines off the ground after pruning. He suddenly comes upon a woman, sprawled dead in the frost covered ditch, nothing but an old dirty blanket on her back. Her face is contorted with pain from the cold she suffered. Her hair looks almost gray from being frozen.

The police come to investigate, she's got no identification with her.
But as the film progresses we learn her name is Mona, short for Simone. In flash backs we see her traveling like a leaf on the wind, never staying in one place for too long, hitching rides, and pitching her tent. Bumming cigarettes, and getting water and bread (sometimes dope) from kind strangers, a few she gets to know, but they never really figure out who she is. But, they agree as they talk to the camera, she's someone they'll never forget.

The film takes place during winter, Mona says she likes to travel then because there aren't that many people out, and it's easier to get a ride. Those who she meets, are mostly good, but some bad. She experiences the perils of a young woman traveling alone. Hunger, cold, rape... She isn't a naive street urchin, but a gritty character, tough and defiant.

I found Mona, so endearing and painfully haunting. I became more and more sad, to know she had died. And when that tragic moment came, I couldn't help but cry a little. Sandrine Bonnaire made her seem so real. And I love how the movie was shot. Told in flashbacks, by the people who had known her, however briefly. They speak directly to the camera. A very powerful film, very poignant and absolutely haunting.

Filmed in Nimes, France. In the stark landscape of mid-winter. Anges Varda's masterpiece. Sandrine Bonnaire won the Cesar award for best actress. Even though it's sad and ends (and begins) with tragedy, I am definitely going watch it again.

This film deserves no less than five stars!

After CLEO FROM 5 TO 7, Criterion released a few weeks ago another movie of french director Agnès Varda : VAGABOND. The original title of the movie is SANS TOIT NI LOI which could have been translated WITHOUT ROOF NOR LAW. I don't know whether this last translation makes any sense in english but it sure does in french emphasizing the rebellious side of Sandrine Bonnaire's character.

Still at the beginning of her career, Sandrine Bonnaire gives here a performance that deserves the utmost respect. Surrounded by semi professionals or amateurs, she brings Mona to life and death in a stellar performance. Of course, first you have to accept Agnès Varda's style, a mixture of (false) documentary and fiction.

VAGABOND is the anti-romantic movie by essence. The glorious nature so often depicted by writers and the postcards sent by your lucky friends is replaced by an hostile environment made of mud or frozen water. Sandrine Bonnaire is not wandering through France for fun, she's not heading to the southern part of France in a symbolic search for hope. She just wants to be free and alone. She's the last rebel.

No extra-features with this Criterion release except for english subtitles. Great sound and images which will plunge you deep into the sadness of a cold winter.

A - no hope - DVD.

This movie is one of the best I have ever seen. It poses many questions to the viewerlike, "What is total freedom?" and "Is everyone isolated from one another?". Sandrine Bonnaire captures the Vagabond with a strange cool and shows the viewer a face that truly anyone can become. The story is about a Vagabond, who to many has no name, but leaves a massive impression. We first see her dead and frozen, nothing but a faceless figure that means nothing to anyone. Then as we begin to get glimpses into her life from people she met along the way we begin to give her a face and the face we give her is all too clear. It is the face of an isolated, scared, lonely person who is lost and unable to help herself. As a viwer we are unable to have a rockhard understanding of whether or not we care for the Vagabond. We see her pain so clearly that perhaps we are understanding, yet we also see a selfish person who thinks only of herself. When the film ends we are left wondering how many vagabonds we have come across and whether or not we are one ourselves.

An impressive piece! This film was made by the woman who was one of the first pioneers in the 50s to invent the techniques now widely used in "New Wave", "Dogma 95" and "Cinema Verite".... With a deeply moving tale and powerful shots, this film makes the Blair Witch Project looks boring and uninnovative. The DVD transfer is at the best quality, and the package gives helpful and stimulating information to viewers who are unfamiliar with Varda's works.

Sandrine Bonnaire is flawless in her performance. This movie will haunt you whenever you have the urge to chuck it all and hit the road.

In Agnes Varda's "Vagabond", a young girl (Mona) drifts from place to place throughout the countryside and towns of France. She scratches out an existence mainly through the largesse of those she meets along the way. Unlike in the United States, where homeless people are assumed to be mental defects, the itinerants portrayed in this film (including the main character) seem to be making a very self-aware and philosophical choice to be vagrants. Mona seems to have dropped out of conventional society out of sheer self-indulgence and an aversion to work, rather than for any other reason. Along the way, characters alternatively envy her lifestyle, take pity on her or revile her completely.

The story also threads characters in and out of the plot, and many seem peripherally related to each other. Throughout the film, some of these characters speak directly to the camera about their impressions of Mona. This technique seems vaguely contrived. But the gritty unwashed feel of the movie makes it a special experience. It lends a documentary feel to the film that draws the viewer in. The director avoids passing off any overt judgments about the main character and her lifestyle. Portrayals of purposeful vagrancy in Europe seem to be a rare phenomenon. The film's unique view of the underexposed underbelly of France makes it worthy enough to ingrain in your memory.

This movie is about a drifter who perished on the winter road, starved and frozen. Once in a while, we come across something that we can not shake off. This is it. The image of the woman wandering around will haunt you for a long time. If you like this movie, read the non-fiction book by Jon Krakauer, Into The Wilderness.

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.

*** 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

I didn't like this movie.

I never really found anything out about the girl in it. And what I did find out...I never really liked her. Maybe if I knew a little about where she came from, what caused her to be so anti-social and yet so loose. But you don't get much. She doesn't like crowds, she can't be responsible with any money, she smells.

I've read a few reviews that put credit in "how she touches the lives of others." But they all appear unchanged and end up saying, "I don't know what happened to her."

She was already living in squalor, squating in abandoned barns and greenhouses, never bathing, sponging off every person she meets.

So why three stars? Because the French got it right.

If Hollywood made this movie, they would have totally romanticized this girl's vagabond existence. Because Hollywood loves and idolizes the free-spirit hippie lifestyle. The millionaires who make movies--who wouldn't dare eat in a buffet with the working class people--would remake this movie as an ode to the road, an extended celebration of freedom and discovery, leaving out all that hopelessness, isolation, despair and basic stink of homeless existence.

So, even though I didn't like this movie, I appreciated that Hollywood didn't try to sell me one of their basic lines of b.s.

I'm not giving anything away by saying that this selfish, frivolous girl ends up dying in a ditch--it's the first scene of the movie!--but I'm glad the Americans or their naive unrealism didn't flower it up.

Other than that...what was the point?