Vagabond

Released 1992
Stars Sandrine Bonnaire, Macha Meril, Stephane Freiss, Laurence Cortadellas, Marthe Jarnias, Yolande Moreau
Directed by Agnes Varda

The opening shot moves in ever so slowly across the bleak fields of a French winter landscape. Two trees stand starkly outlined at the top of a hill. There is no joy here. As the camera moves closer, we see in the bottom of a ditch the blue and frozen body of a young woman. A field hand discovers her and lets out a cry. Soon the authorities are there with their clipboards, recording those things that can be known, such as the height and weight and eye color of the corpse, and wondering about all the things that cannot be known, such as her name and how she came to be dead in a ditch.

Then we hear Agnes Varda's voice on the soundtrack, telling us that she became absorbed by the mystery of this young stranger's last months on Earth and sought the testimony of those people who had known her. "Vagabond," however, is the story of a woman who could not be known. And although there are many people who can step forward and say they spoke with the young woman, sheltered her, gave her food and drink, shared cigarettes and even sex with her, there is no one to say that they knew her.

"Vagabond" tries to feel like a documentary, a series of flashbacks to certain days in the last months of the girl's life. Actually, it is all fiction. And, like all good fiction, it is able to imply much more than it knows. From bits and pieces of information that the girl spreads out among the people that she meets, we learn that she was born of middle-class parents, that she took secretarial training, that she worked in an office but hated it, that eventually she went on the road, carrying her possessions and a tent in a knapsack on her back, begging food and shelter, sometimes doing a little work for a little money.

One of the most painful subtleties of this film is the way we see the girl's defenses finally fall. One day after another, almost without seeming to, she sinks lower and lower. The life of the vagabond becomes the life of the outcast, and then the outcast becomes the abanboned. Finally, the abandoned becomes an animal, muddy and unkempt, disoriented, at the bottom, no longer able to keep up the appearance even of a hobo. At the end, she seems bewildered, frightened, amazed at how low she has fallen. Finally she cries, and we remember how young and defenseless she is, under that tough skin.

Summary by Roger Ebert