Please note: This was screened in Aug 2018
Unapologetically transgressive, righteously bleak and infused with a uniquely feminist sensibility, this is a heartbreaking account of a defiant, free-spirited woman which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1985.
Set against the frozen landscape of rural France, Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire, brilliant) is a complex and contradictory drifter, who survives on handouts and passing liaisons with strangers. Vagabond opens at the end, with the discovery of her body in a ditch, then using flashbacks and interviews we hear accounts from a number of fictional witnesses, interviewed by the narrator (Varda herself). Through Varda’s documentary-like approach, we get a largely unflattering picture of the interviewees as they expose their own fears and hypocrisies which reveal much about themselves, whilst Mona’s true nature remains ungraspable.
Structured around the hazards of a female drifter’s experience, and by extension the female experience more generally, Vagabond remains powerful and timely – and was very likely an important influence on Kelly Reichardt’s drifter story, 2008's Wendy and Lucy.