Sans Toit ni Loi, 1985
[Vagabond/Without Roof or Rule]
Agnes Varda's Vagabond is an excoriating,
subtly disturbing portrait of alienation and lost direction. The discolored
body of a drifter is found in a ditch, frozen to death. Her name is
Mona Bergeron (Sandrine Bonnaire), an inscrutable young woman who
comes from a good home and possesses employable skills, but has dropped
out of society and chosen the freedom of non-responsibility (Similarly,
in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blue,
Julie's liberation from her painful tragedy comes from relinquishing
all of her possessions). Varda clinically unfolds her life before
us through the unstructured fluidity of a narrative, reflecting the
heroine's nomadic existence: anecdotes, interviews and observations
by other people who have crossed paths with her, but do not really
know her. A truck driver offers Mona a ride, only to be insulted about
his vehicle. A disenfranchised intellectual sets aside an area of
his farm for her own use, only to squander her time, leaving the land
barren and uncultivated. She humors a wealthy, senile old woman, who
seems to enjoy her company. But there is no profound connection in
those vacuous eyes, only the opportunity for a free drink and means
to pass idle time. Along the way, there are several missed opportunities
for help and stability: a kind Turkish migrant worker who works in
a vineyard, a house-sitter who envies her freedom and simple passion,
a research professor whose recent brush with death elicits a regret
of abandonment, and subsequently asks her self-absorbed protégé
to find the vagrant. Mona tells the intellectual that her dream is
to own a piece of land and grow potatoes. Later, she tells the professor
that she wants to be the caretaker of a large house. Given the opportunity
to experience both, she walks away. Inevitably, she succumbs to the
distraction of a primal ritual - the metaphoric struggle of daily
life - and surrenders to the cold, hopeless abyss into which she has
fallen. What does she want from life? What does she hope to find in
the streets? To distill her innate longing into elemental needs is
to depreciate the complexity of the human soul. After all, can spiritual
hunger be quenched by a scrap of bread, a warm place to stay, and
the kindness of a well-intentioned stranger?
© Acquarello 1999. All rights reserved.
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