Mad in the 70s

For several years now I’ve been intending to watch some of John Cassavetes films. But somehow I’ve never gotten around to doing so. Cassavetes might not have produced movies popular with the movie going public, but from what I’ve been reading, he seems to have had a lasting impact on people who make movies and people who write about them.

For our next club film, we can watch “A Woman under the Influence” from 1974. It promises to be an intense movie.

Since we are coming to the end of the year, shall we start discussion of this one on January 1st?

New pick?

Whose turn is it? Driftwood?

Parables

Let me preface this by saying I don't think the director intentionally sought to turn Cleo into the heroine of a parable, but I thought her story had parallels to Buddha. She leaves a pampered and satiating environment and chooses to face her crisis out in the world. She sheds her wig, much like the Buddha shaved off his hair. She's facing the loss of beauty and youth and accepting her own mortality.

It was a neat perspective to the movie.

Oh my God

If this film were any more French, it would be Italian.

Discuss.

a feminist in the mix?

What is Dorothee's purpose here -- does her existence trigger a change in values for Cleo?

I loved this exchange:

"You don't mind posing?"

"No, why?"

"I'd feel so exposed, afraid people would find a fault."

"Nonsense. My body makes me happy, not proud."

the short

As dw noted in an earlier comment, director Jean Luc-Godard had a cameo in the film short Raoul plays for Cleo and Dorothee. This appears to be a self-referential nod to the rise of the French New Wave filmmakers -- most of whom began as their careers as critics and moved into filmmaking by directing short films while they wrote and worked on larger projects that gave them cinematic prominence. I assume Raoul was supposed to be like a young Godard and Anna Karina a send-up of the muse she became in films like Alphaville and Band of Outsiders.

The short itself seemed rather silly and portrayed the women like helpless dolls. Anything to that?

Cleo and Antoine

Did they fall in love?

very superstitious

Cleo seems subject (even victim) to sort of a mixed bag of beliefs in the short period of time conveyed in the film. The superstitions served a dual purpose -- sort of tormenting Cleo for not having any consistent convictions or a philosophy to guide her through a crisis, and offering viewers a series of visual and audial cues to her troubled frame of mind. She didn't have to say she was superstitious; she could preen in the cab while her song played on the radio, then lose her spirit as she watches a series of macabre masks flash by. No dialogue necessary.

Where do these beliefs fit in? To an extent, Cleo emancipates herself from them, undergoes a sort of existential healing period in the park, then either stays in that state of frame of mind or reaches next for rationalism when the doctor gives her an optimistic (?) outlook. I know existentialism is supposed to be a theme of these films. What was Varda trying to say here?

From 5 to 7

What did you think of the periodic time markers that were the framework of Cléo's story? Did it heighten the suspense? Build a feeling of finality or doom? Was Varda, a documentarian, giving it a "real time"?

At one point I thought the film was running in "real time" -- that it would conclude at exactly 120 minutes when instead it finished at 90. Since innovative narrative techniques are a part of New Wave cinema, I was a little disappointed to find that was not the case.

But of interest -- the break in the film when Raoul shows Cléo and Dorothée his short film is at the 6 p.m. mark -- supposedly halfway through the story -- and he refers afterward to an "intermission."

"How are my kittens?"

Cléo's scampering pets are a charming distraction from the story in the same way Cléo is treated (and portrays herself) -- an amusing plaything, graceful, soft to touch. Her potential illness is what worries her on the surface, but as she turns for support for the black period ahead, she discovers the meaninglessness of her present relationships. She has a maid who doubles as a resentful mother and lectures her that men don't want to know of troubles or illness. Her songwriting team doesn't respect her. (Did you catch her song titles? "Wayward Girl." "Inconstant Girl." "The Girl Who Lied.") Her inattentive lover visits to handle her for a moment just like she petted her little cat. She's a creature whose material gains are based on fleeting qualities -- youth, beauty -- and whose happiness is marred by fear of not pleasing others, of not keeping their attention. As soon as she tears off that ridiculous wig, she's a changed person.

I read a little about New Wave Cinema for a background to this film, and in "A World History of Film," Robert Skylar writes: "New Wave films in general are open to criticism for disdainful treatment of women characters." He goes on to cite a couple of examples from films of the time, but needless to say, Varda's films aren't among them.

a pearl

In "Cléo from 5 to 7," director Agnès Vardas spins what first appears to be a straightforward story about a vain young singer awaiting results of cancer biopsy into the most magnificent character study I've ever viewed. The film reflects such a profound transformation of a human being, and in doing so it surpasses the challenge of not only making the audience believe in Cléo/Florence's springboard to maturity, but it makes it seem plausible that a person can blossom from life-changing events in the mere two hours in which the story is allegedly set. The writing, directing and acting collectively contributed to a reverse Cinderella story that, despite the verdict she's been waiting for, leaves Cléo and the audience with what feels like a substantive ending and a new beginning.