Review of Vagabond (1992) by Nikolaos S — 08 Jan 2010

The title could better be translated "Without Roof or Rules." This is my 2nd Agnes Varda Film. I was really emotionally affected by Cleo 9 to 5. In this film Vagabond Mona is broke, alone & young female leading an isolated existential hobo life.

In winter in the south of France, a young woman is found frozen in a ditch (Mona). She's unkempt, a vagabond. Through flashbacks & brief interviews, we trace her final weeks, as she camps alone or falls in with various men & women, many of whom project their needs onto her or try to give her life direction.

She squats in an old house smoking hash with a man, falls for a Tunisian laborer & works beside him pruning grape vines, stays with a couple shepherding goats, meets an agronomist trying to save plane trees, gets tipsy with an old woman, & has an offer to appear in porn films.

The story of 18-year-old Mona Bergeron (Sandrine Bonnaire) is told to us by Varda in almost documentary style & in reverse order. To most the people she encounters she means freedom to them as they seem trapped in their own lives & existences.

To others she is merely a pawn to be used. Maybe Varda based this on someone real she knew in her own life. It really is a meditative evocative film. It is very powerful in its scenes of few words. It is quite the tale of human loneliness.

Mona is part of all of us but she is strongly incapable of love & unwilling to thank people for their efforts to help her, yet Varda is objective regarding her "heroine". I question Varda's intent: is it to ask ourselves how Mona was influenced in her life to get to this mental state? Varda makes no apologies as she follows Agnes Varda in her downward spiral.

Varda may be the least-appreciated great filmmaker of Europe's golden age. After this film Varda concentrated only on making documentaries. Like Citizen Kane, this story tries to piece together other people's impressions in an attempt to give a coherent picture of someone's life including the ghastly end of it.