Cléo from 5 to 7

"Photographer-turned-director Agnes Varda is considered the archetypal girl who crashed the big boys' clubhouse, and Cléo from 5 to 7 was the film that paid her membership fee." —Slant Magazine, Film review

Cléo from 5 To 7 is one of the first films by Agnes Varda, a French New Wave director. It depicts two hours in the life of a woman wandering throughout Paris on June 22, 1961.

The film develops several themes: the fear of death, the possibility of living a meaningful life, the relations between human beings, the perception of women. But it is also a quasi-documentary depiction of Paris in the early 1960s.

Tropes used in Cléo from 5 to 7 include:

• Bittersweet Ending: The story ends abruptly without a dramatic resolution, leaving Cléo's fate an open question.
• Brainless Beauty: This is how most people perceive Cléo, and the audience's challenge is to see beyond the stereotype without Cléo herself making it any easier with her flighty, self-absorbed attitude.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The entire film is in black and white, except the opening scene.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: There's Cléo, and we're going to be in her company from 5 to 7 p.m.
  • Actually, if one wishes to nitpick, the story ends before the two hours are up, which may be meaningful in itself. See the Fridge Brilliance entry on Cléo from 5 to 7/Fridge the Fridge page.
• Foreshadowing: The film is peppered with symbolic references to death, such as the words "Deuil" (mourning) and "Pompes funèbres" (funeral parlor) appearing in the background, a mirror breaking and Cléo's black dress.
• Fortune Teller: Her tarot reading at the beginning of the movie is the only scene shot in color. Of course she draws the Death card.
• Gay Paree: Displayed in a naturalistic way. To quote the Slant review again: "Varda captures the fairy-tale essence of early '60s Paris with a vivacity and richness that rivals Godard's Breathless."
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Cléo's friend is completely unselfconscious about posing nude for a whole room of mostly male sculptors.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: The naturalistic Slice of Life narrative is interspersed in its middle part by a song number.
• Show Within the Show: The movie within the movie.
• Slice of Life
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The film is chock full of footage of Paris crowds and fashion from the 1960s.
  • At one point, Cléo, while on a taxi, hears radio news about the Algerian War.