Amazon.com video review:
Agnes Varda, the lone woman in the French New Wave boys' club, made
her reputation with her second feature Cleo from 5 to 7, a 90-minute
drama set in real time exploring the internal turmoil of a flighty young
pop
singer who awaits the results of a medical examination for cancer. Leaving
behind her elegant, almost antiseptic apartment for the bustle of the
Parisian streets, she weaves through crowds and watches street performers
while struggling with her fears and self-recriminations, confronting her
shortcomings and finding hope in a chance meeting with a young soldier.
Varda captures the vibrant social world and its easy rhythms in creamy
black and white
with smooth long takes, bringing an almost tactile quality to Cleo's
personal odyssey, punctuated with chapter titles marking the time until her
appointment at the hospital. Corinne Marchand's Cleo enters as a spoiled
adolescent, but introspective internal monologues and brief encounters with
strangers etch a portrait of a woman hiding her fears under a façade of
flightiness, only discarding the mask when she firmly embraces life in the
face of possible death. --Sean Axmaker
