Nipping audience's hope in the bud, in VAGABOND, Varda lets on the bleak fate of its protagonist right out of the box, a corpse of a girl in rigor mortis is found in a ditch of the wintry southern France. Who is this young girl? Deploying a subjective female voice-over and a faux documentary idiom (with some of the actors breaking the fourth wall) of interviewing all sorts of people who have crossed their paths with Mona (Bonnaire) before her demise, VAGABOND flashes back to her wandering days and paints a harrowing picture of Varda's concept of “absolute freedom”.
Emerging from the sea stark naked (no bikini, she is not a Bond girl), Mona simply crops up and starts her hitchhiking and camping way of life. She has no destination, roaming from one place to another, cadging food and water, sleeping in her tent, sometimes taking odd jobs to earn some pittance. She likes smoking weed, but nothing above Class C. She also accepts the risk of being on her own-some, rapists are odious, but occasionally she also puts out, enjoys male company of a fellow wandering Jew (Lepczynski), and his weed. When a parting of the ways arrives, Mona never looks back. Twice, she has a chance to settle down, one is with a shepherd and his family, who studies philosophy but chooses the middle ground between freedom and society, but Mona is an absolutist, she makes no compromise even if it means ruination;another is with a Tunisian vineyard worker (Assouna), only his promise turns hollow when contretemps occurs.
In Varda's design, Mona is a litmus test of human morality, through those who she encounters, with whom Mona establishes various tentative even tenuous interactions, you have the snooty (a young academic type), the sympathetic (a female agronomy professor), the fickle (a gormless maid), and a hoot in the person of an elderly granny (Jarnias), it is the only time hilarity bursts out in Mona's lifeworld. Each episode ends with a tracking shot that foregrounds Mona's resolute ambulation, plus Joanna Bruzdowicz's lyrical and soul-stirring score and DP Patrick Blossier's subdued, melancholic cinematography make concordant bedfellows.
A 18-year-old Bonnaire submerges herself wholeheartedly into her character sans pretense, affectation or make-up, her Mona is so true to herself that she exhibits none of the politesse nor the pleasantries you expect from a common human being, she says what she feels bluntly and matter-of-factly, and takes the consequences in her stride. Bonnaire is steely, headstrong, but also dolefully vulnerable (when she is harassed in the grotesque carnival near the end, you can be vicariously in sympathy with her startled despair), and you are in thrall of crashing apprehension seeing her life force being slowly drained off from her body.
Operated by any lesser hands, Mona's self-abnegating pursuance could feel over-deliberate or high-handed, but Varda has no hubris in her bones, she doesn't pass judgment and allots equal disinterestedness to each character, including Mona, . There is alway honesty and humanity gleaned from Varda's works, but VAGABOND, or Sans toit ni loi ("without roof or law") might rightfully be her pièce de résistance, immensely profound, yet acutely relatable.
referential entries: Varda's LE BONHEUR (1965, 8.2/10); Chloé Zhao's NOMADLAND (2020, 8.3/10).
English Title: Vagabond
Original Title: Sans toit ni loi
Year: 1985
Genre: Drama
Country: France
Language: French, Arabic, English
Director/Screenwriter: Agnès Varda
Music: Joanna Bruzdowicz
Cinematography: Patrick Blossier
Editing: Patricia Mazuy, Agnès Varda
Cast:
Sandrine Bonnaire
Macha Méril
Stephane Freiss
Yolande Moreau
Patrick Lepczynski
Yahiaoui Assouna
Joël Fosse
Marthe Jarnias
Laurence Cortadellas
Rating: 8.5/10
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