Sans toit ni loi (1985)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Director:

Agnès Varda

Writer:

Agnès Varda (writer)

Release Date:

16 May 1986 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

In winter in the south of France, a young woman is found frozen in a ditch. She's ill kempt, a vagabond...

Plot Keywords:

Vagabond | Smoking | Champagne | Vagrant | Nudity

Awards:

8 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

Sandrine Bonnaire	...	Mona Bergeron, sans toit ni loi
Setti Ramdane	...	le marocaine qui la trouve
Francis Balchère	...	un gendarme
Jean-Louis Perletti	...	un autre
Urbain Causse	...	un paysan interrogé
Christophe Alcazar	...	un autre, brûleyrr de fossé
Dominique Durand	...	le premier motard
Joël Fosse	...	l'autre, Paulo, amant de Yolande
Patrick Schmit	...	le camionneur
Daniel Bos	...	Le démolisseur
Katy Champaud	...	le jeune fille à la pompe
Raymond Roulle	...	le vieux aux allumettes
Henri Fridlani	...	le fossoyeur
Patrick Sokol	...	le jaune homme au sandwich
Pierre Imbert	...	le garagiste

Also Known As:

Vagabond (USA)
Without Roof or Rule (literal English title)

Runtime:

105 min

Country:

France | UK

Language:

Arabic | French | English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:L | Australia:M | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:R | West Germany:12

Company:

Channel Four Films

Movie Connections:

References Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962)

Soundtrack:

Variations sur la Vita

Mona's journey will touch you deeply

Perhaps Sandrine Bonnaire's "Mona" represents my greatest fear -- of being alone and broke. That is why she has remained with me for almost twenty years. Remembering the first time I met her is nostalgic to me. I walked the roads of rural France with her and liked her for not begging to be liked. Perhaps it was love more than like. Her journey made me tearful. I mourned the inevitability of her existence.

Such is Agnes Varda's talent that the movie affected me so deeply -- my favourite movie of hers, by the way. The landscapes are so vivid, the dead tree branches so bare yet so brittle in the harsh elements. The compositions possess a fixed, absolute nature that conveys a hopeless destiny. There is no offensive beauty in Mona's destitution, there is merely purity.

Because so few motion pictures resonate with this much intensity and feeling for me, I go through periods in which I feel like I'm wasting my life away seeing so many, but when I consider the alternative, Mona's choices suddenly feel real to me.

Extraordinary in every sense.

Make a gallant effort to see VAGABOND. It will touch you deeply and wake you from the slumber of indifference.