Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75464 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-05-16
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com
Sandrine Bonnaire plays Mona, a vagabond found dead from exposure in the opening scene, whose final few months we follow in flashback. Traipsing through the French countryside in winter, Mona skips along from one situation to another, more interested in survival and sustenance than making any kind of permanent connection, resolute in her individuality. But she touches the lives of those around her, from a cultured professor who sees in her a romantic symbol of social freedom to a farming couple who offers her their way of life with a plot of land to a widow whose stiffness is mellowed by her directness. Yet she remains enigmatic as everyone projects their own fantasies on the alienated figure who meets every obstacle with a retreat to the road. Agnes Varda's chilly view weaves in commentaries and direct address of the bystanders and bit players whose lives are touched by Mona, but they ultimately reveal more about the speaker than the drifter. By the end of the film we don't know much more about her beyond her steely immutability and disconnection, and Varda is resolute in her no-apologies, no-excuses portrait. It's an assured film rich in detail with an enigma at the center. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

VAGABOND
The film opens on the scene of a bare vineyard, it's winter, and a worker is collecting vines off the ground after pruning. He suddenly comes upon a woman, sprawled dead in the frost covered ditch, nothing but an old dirty blanket on her back. Her face is contorted with pain from the cold she suffered. Her hair looks almost gray from being frozen.

The police come to investigate, she's got no identification with her.
But as the film progresses we learn her name is Mona, short for Simone. In flash backs we see her traveling like a leaf on the wind, never staying in one place for too long, hitching rides, and pitching her tent. Bumming cigarettes, and getting water and bread (sometimes dope) from kind strangers, a few she gets to know, but they never really figure out who she is. But, they agree as they talk to the camera, she's someone they'll never forget.

The film takes place during winter, Mona says she likes to travel then because there aren't that many people out, and it's easier to get a ride. Those who she meets, are mostly good, but some bad. She experiences the perils of a young woman traveling alone. Hunger, cold, rape... She isn't a naive street urchin, but a gritty character, tough and defiant.

I found Mona, so endearing and painfully haunting. I became more and more sad, to know she had died. And when that tragic moment came, I couldn't help but cry a little. Sandrine Bonnaire made her seem so real. And I love how the movie was shot. Told in flashbacks, by the people who had known her, however briefly. They speak directly to the camera. A very powerful film, very poignant and absolutely haunting.

Filmed in Nimes, France. In the stark landscape of mid-winter. Anges Varda's masterpiece. Sandrine Bonnaire won the Cesar award for best actress. Even though it's sad and ends (and begins) with tragedy, I am definitely going watch it again.

This film deserves no less than five stars!

TO LIVE AND DIE IN FRANCE
After CLEO FROM 5 TO 7, Criterion released a few weeks ago another movie of french director Agnès Varda : VAGABOND. The original title of the movie is SANS TOIT NI LOI which could have been translated WITHOUT ROOF NOR LAW. I don't know whether this last translation makes any sense in english but it sure does in french emphasizing the rebellious side of Sandrine Bonnaire's character.

Still at the beginning of her career, Sandrine Bonnaire gives here a performance that deserves the utmost respect. Surrounded by semi professionals or amateurs, she brings Mona to life and death in a stellar performance. Of course, first you have to accept Agnès Varda's style, a mixture of (false) documentary and fiction.

VAGABOND is the anti-romantic movie by essence. The glorious nature so often depicted by writers and the postcards sent by your lucky friends is replaced by an hostile environment made of mud or frozen water. Sandrine Bonnaire is not wandering through France for fun, she's not heading to the southern part of France in a symbolic search for hope. She just wants to be free and alone. She's the last rebel.

No extra-features with this Criterion release except for english subtitles. Great sound and images which will plunge you deep into the sadness of a cold winter.

A - no hope - DVD.

An isolating, disturbing and terribly moving tale
This movie is one of the best I have ever seen. It poses many questions to the viewerlike, "What is total freedom?" and "Is everyone isolated from one another?". Sandrine Bonnaire captures the Vagabond with a strange cool and shows the viewer a face that truly anyone can become. The story is about a Vagabond, who to many has no name, but leaves a massive impression. We first see her dead and frozen, nothing but a faceless figure that means nothing to anyone. Then as we begin to get glimpses into her life from people she met along the way we begin to give her a face and the face we give her is all too clear. It is the face of an isolated, scared, lonely person who is lost and unable to help herself. As a viwer we are unable to have a rockhard understanding of whether or not we care for the Vagabond. We see her pain so clearly that perhaps we are understanding, yet we also see a selfish person who thinks only of herself. When the film ends we are left wondering how many vagabonds we have come across and whether or not we are one ourselves.