Movies at the Museum: Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) by Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7 follows its effervescent, titular heroine as she traipses around Paris, anxiously awaiting the results of a biopsy she fears might lead to her death or deformity. Cléo’s sparkling self-performance slowly matures over the course of an afternoon when her mundane interactions with her cosmopolitan friends and fellow Parisians are unexpectedly weighted with her anxiety for the future and the possibility of her own oblivion.

Varda’s second feature film showcases the signature motifs that would define her six-decade career: a formal intensity measured with an airy exuberance, a yielding attention toward the least expecting of her subjects, and above all, a love of life.

Once describing her own film as ​“a portrait of a woman painted onto a documentary of Paris,” Cléo encapsulates the spirit of the French New Wave: impossibly stylish and decidedly tender in the face of existential despair.