Os Renegados

We know from the very beginning the fate of Sandrine Bonnaire's Mona, the "Vagabond" of the title in Agnes Varda's magnificent film. She's dead, a frozen corpse in a ditch and then, in flashbacks, we see how she got there. Varda never passes judgment and "Vagabond", like her very best films, is a work of observation. As well as a handful of professional actors she uses the people of the towns and villages Bonnaire passes through, giving the film an air of reality while Bonnaire herself is simply superb.

Varda doesn't require her to do anything but exist and it's a very 'un-actressy' performance, closer to real life than to what we are used to seeing in the movies. Now and again the film dips into the conventional as if Varda is trying to put some meat on its bones but for the most part, this is a remarkable work and one of the best of its director's career.

What I admired the most about "Vagabond" is the objective, evenhanded approach of the director towards her "heroine". She neither praises nor condemns her chosen "lifestyle", she simply observes it - and she observes it so well that this feels like the work of someone who's had first-hand experiences with similar people and surroundings. To be perfectly honest, the film doesn't have much psychological (or sociological) depth, and it can get boring at times while you're watching it, but right after it's over, you know that you've seen a good movie. (***)

You're an outcast, left to fend all on your own, reasons unclear, and only you're the one who knows, wandering the barren lands, in a winter where cold's fanned, on occasion some small morsel might be thrown. The net, that's meant to catch your fall has failed, as you cascade along a lost and lonely trail, folks indifferent to your plight, you're frustrations causing flight, becoming cornered, without wind to catch your sail.

Through an outstanding performance from Sandrine Bonnaire, the late, great Agnès Varda leaves us under no illusion of the cause of a young woman's death during her winter of discontent.

This is only my second proper Varda film: I've only watched her documentary on her late husband (director Jacques Demy), JACQUOT DE NANTES (1991) and her ode to nickelodeon days ONE HUNDRED AND ONE NIGHTS OF SIMON CINEMA (1995); I do have 4 more titles by her on VHS but, alas, only in French i.e. with no English subtitles!

Despite being past her vintage, this is a remarkable piece of work: affecting but unsentimental, vivid rather than depressing. It deals with the last few days of a vagrant girl (a member of the working-class who got fed up with her vapid lifestyle and decided to find herself again 'on the road'), played with candor and great passion by Sandrine Bonnaire - a deserving Cesar Award recipient (the film itself emerged triumphant at Cannes). Still, the film doesn't romanticize her existence at all - the rejections and abuses she suffers throughout her journey, the abject poverty, the bitter cold, indeed her entire unwholesome environment - and, in fact, has all the air of being a story gleaned from the headlines (fittingly given a cine-verite' approach by Varda, providing intermittent interrogations by the police of the people who saw her last and one particular character addressing the audience directly at several stages during the film!).

Necessarily episodic in nature, the film does goes on a tad too long (especially the interlude with the Arabic immigrant, who actually plays himself!) but it basically covers the gamut of emotions, while also containing an unexpected - but most welcome - spurt of irreverence in the scenes involving a senile rich old lady, the messy (and vaguely Surrealist) Wine Festival towards the very end, and extending even to the droll final credit roll! Like a number of their early releases, the Criterion DVD is unfortunately bare-bones.

Someone moving through life in a way so counter to the norm, taking the road less traveled and often so vulnerable doing so, is like a mirror held up to humanity. Some react with incredible generosity and try to give her a leg up, and others are harsh or prey on her. To its credit, the film doesn't glamorize this character and frankly she's often hard to like, and yet Varda has a way of bringing out empathy, a big part of which is suspending judgment. It didn't all work for me, like the maid with problems of her own addressing the camera, and it's a bleak tale, but the profoundly deep kindness of the director radiates like a beacon. Sandrine Bonnaire gave a fine performance too.