Cinema
Cléo from 5 to 7
Cléo de 5 à 7
Agnès Varda · 1962
Synopsis
Paris, 21 June, five o'clock in the afternoon. Cléo, a well-known singer, awaits the results of a biopsy, and a fortune-teller who reads her cards unsettles her. With Angèle, her assistant, she buys a hat, receives her lover for a moment, rehearses new songs with her composer and her lyricist, then crosses Paris. She meets her friend Dorothée in an artists' studio and watches a short silent film with her. She then meets Antoine, a soldier on leave from the Algerian War.
Context
The story unfolds from five o'clock to half past six in the evening, and the film follows it almost minute by minute, in ninety minutes. Corinne Marchand plays Cléo; the music is by Michel Legrand. The short silent film that the two friends watch is a comedy in which Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina appear. Shot in Paris in 1961, the film combines, according to Criterion, documentary truth and melodrama.
Who it is for
An hour and a half, in black and white, following the heroine through the streets of Paris.
Prizes and reception
Presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1962; Criterion has included it in the complete films of the director.
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