Vagabond (1985)

This is a sterling film in every way --direction, screenplay, acting, cinematography, the works -- but also one of the most depressing movies you will ever see, so be forewarned. It is not a pleasant matter to watch someone's march toward and arrival at extinction. Vagabond is really a long suicide scene.

Writer / director Agnes Varda keeps the dramatic situation simple. A very young woman (Sandrine Bonnaire) who has decided to "drop out" of bourgeois society (somewhat in the manner of the Summer of Love pilgrims I referred to a couple of posts back, though with less of an end in mind; there's no San Francisco) encounters a series of people who take varying degrees of interest in her, but none of whom influences her to take a more definite path than the one leading her to nowhere. The vagabond's rejection of structure is absolute and unnerving, and clearly comes with a heavy price. The folks she encounters could be said to represent a range of accommodations to the pressures the "real world" imposes. One of them, a philosophy student turned goatherd, is the most articulate about the need for making some compromises, in his case as small as possible but still important ones; and he is the most disgusted when the girl spurns his efforts to help, by setting her up in small-scale potato farming, or having her assist with his family's herding and goat cheese-selling, or something.

The movie presents a pointedly unromantic view of "freedom," set against a bleak (but not snowy) wintry harshness. (Snow would be too pretty; snow is a blanket.) Sandrine Bonnaire was only 17 when the movie was shot -- not for Varda that typical form of movie cheating when actors play roles ten years their junior -- and her youth, counter-balanced at first by the brash attitude of the dropout, becomes more desperately apparent as hopeless scene follows hopeless scene. Her boots fray to the point where she can scarcely walk in them, her scared emotions get closer to the surface, until by the last scene when she trips and cries, it's almost too deeply upsetting to watch.