Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962)

This stream of consciousness review and personal appreciation (from the point of view of a then-aspiring filmmaker) was written after watching Cléo de 5 à 7 during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. My overall rating for the film was 3.5 stars out of 4. On my scale, 3.5 stars qualifies as "very good."

This is one of the most fascinating character studies that I have ever seen. Countless times in the film, singer Cléo (played brilliantly by Corinne Marchand) is called a child by her friends and colleagues, which is a very true observation of our titular character. She is very much a child: curious, desperate for attention, indecisive, and an emotional whirlwind. However, she is also very much an adult; an adult who is not appreciated as being such because of her free spirit and willingness to indulge her curiosity and a wide range of emotion. I really did enjoy this film, perhaps more than any of the films I have seen this summer… except for Baywatch (2017). However, I did enjoy this film much more as an aspiring director than I did any other I've seen this summer.

There is so much to applaud this film for, and so much inspiration for me in here. Like Varda’s colleague and friend Jean-Luc Godard’s film Breathless (1960), this film has a montage sequence of riding in a vehicle and asking that the audience’s focus not be on the stunning leading lady, but rather the changing background behind her. The score was beautiful and Cléo’s songs are seductively perfect for the mood of the film. There was not a poor acting performance around. Well, there was one, but I’m not quite ready to discuss him yet. The kittens in her apartment were adorable. Undoubtedly, I had two absolute favorite parts of the film. The first is a technical aspect: I enjoyed when there were little uneven cuts either showing us a couple seconds of what we just saw or even simply a fraction of a second. This is something that I would love to include in a future film project(s). The other was the character of the soldier. The soldier is the only adult that views Cléo as an adult. He respects her. He listens to her. He engages her. He accompanies her. He provides the exact right amount of balance that she needs. For her cynicism, he is optimistic. For things that she finds horrible, he finds them beautiful. For her curiosity, he is equally curious and they each meet the level of acceptance that the other’s curiosity needs. For her single-world experience, he brings multiple worlds right before her and gladly lets her marvel at them and take them in. For her concern when she is awaiting her results, he is concerned for her as well and much more concerned for the well-being of a woman he just met a half-hour before than the people that she surrounds her life with. In a short thirty minutes, Cléo and the soldier share years upon years' worth of conversation and become the closest of friends. And all of this comes from a chance encounter in a secluded section of a public park. Yes, his name is Antoine, but I prefer referring to him as the soldier because it helps emphasize the distance that should exist between him and the lead character, as well as the simplistic beauty of their friendship. Going off of the last part of that sentence, I should not have even used Cléo’s name, I should have just used her title: a singer. While they are friends, their relationship is so much better implied while they are a singer and a soldier, two very different people who let their desires to talk and connect take hold of their mid-Tuesday evening.

Here I am now, at the very end of the review (and a beautiful review at that, if you can excuse such a selfish claim), and I really do not want or wish to share the one real problem I found with this film, but I know that I must for the sake and integrity of film criticism. My one issue with this film was the scene with Cléo’s oft-aloof lover. The scene itself was beautifully shot, which makes its error so much more painful to reminisce upon. After arriving at her apartment and before her songwriters arrive, José (José Luis de Vilallonga) spends a few fleeting moments with his lover. While there are admittedly a few weaker parts in the film's middle, the storyline of Cléo and the soldier would have overpowered and raised the film to the elite tier. However, José's scene was kept and as much as Cléo and the soldier can try, they cannot overcome it. The very beauty of how this scene is shot is the flaw that really hurts this film. If this scene had been omitted or a different camera lens had been used, then the film would have been four stars. The issue has to do with the resolution of the scene. The resolution I'm referring to here is the technical term for the appearance of the film, not the literary term for concluding a scene. The cinematography is very soft and looks like a dream or a peek into heaven. However, it is not a dream nor any bit like heaven. The scene does not provide any desired comfort for Cléo, as her lover is just as unmoved, rigid, and neglectful of her looming situation as the rest of her "friends."

But if there is something positive to pull from the inclusion of José's scene, it's that it further strengthens the humanity of the soldier. Her contemporaries and colleagues know Cléo to be a hypochondriac and therefore never entertain the possibility that her medical examination could result in a very serious cancer diagnosis. Not the soldier. He cares about Cléo and without knowing her too well, or hardly at all depending on how relatively you view association, he is immediately concerned for her and wants to stay with her and be there for her when she gets the final verdict. And even if he knew her previously, you can just tell that the soldier would have viewed this brief and long ninety minutes in Cléo’s life as deserving of nonstop attention, care, worry, and positive vibes, and not as just another hypochondria spell for the singer. Because in the soldier’s worlds, life is beautiful and anything that can threaten life and its beauties must be fought with all a person’s might.