At the theater in which I saw Vagabond, there was an audible gasp from at least two nearby audience members when the heroine climbs onto an immaculately white bedsheet in a luxurious chateau, leaving mud tracks on the ornately decorated linens, and no such gasp when she falls into a filthy ditch, lies immobile, and finally succumbs to exposure. I found myself unaffected, emotionally, by anything in the movie - I didn't laugh when Mona, the wanderer of the title (which in French is Sans toit ni loi, which Babelfish.com tells me means Without roof or rule) gets drunk with an elderly countess, giggling all the while. The camera, under the direction of Agnès Varda, maintains a distance from its central character that is both detached and inquisitive, respectful as a doctor would be, but revealing only as the movie camera can be.

This 1985 film (for which Sandrine Bonnaire, who plays Mona, the vagabond of the title, won the César award for Best Actress - the first of many nominations for the French equivalent of the American Oscar in that category) begins with a field hand discovering her lifeless body in the ditch, and from there Varda employs the documentary device - at the service of fiction and contrivance - to sketch an objective portrait of her final months, weeks, days, hours, and minutes. We depend upon peripheral characters, the people Mona encounters on her wanderings, to create a picture of the sad, free girl. In this way, Varda tests the value, and validity, of empirical observations of a great number of people to show how much can be known about just one. Mona is rarely by herself - she's either accompanied by someone, speaking with someone, or viewed in the background while foreground action is taking place - and the film is interspersed with scenes of conversations with the many people Mona has encountered on her journey. This begins in the opening scenes, when the police interview locals to try and glean information regarding the mysterious dead girl, but Varda abandons this mechanism quickly, and further scenes of this kind show characters exchanging observations, ruminations, dreams, and regrets, and sometimes these characters talk directly to us, looking into the camera.

It is not a happy film, but it is the kind of film that makes one challenge comfortable notions of "feel-good" or "downer" movies. It is a portrait of despair that is cold, earthy, physical, and grey. It is not without humor, but the humor is not without the memory of sadness or the dread of what's to come. At times it seems as if the film is unaware that it's being seen by an audience - it doesn't go for conventional dramatic effects, or effects at all. Varda's camera, operated by Patrick Blossier, seems deliberately unfocused; when Mona is raped, we wander off, cut indifferently to the next scene, and the incident is seemingly forgotten. However, when a goat herder skins one of his stock, we sit and watch, with roughly the same detachment. Just before her death, Mona passes through a small village where a bizarre, seemingly festive ritual is taking place - the villagers board up their windows and lock themselves inside, while a few dress up in hideous, scary, brutish costumes and jokingly "attack" with wine lees those who remain outside. In another movie, the scene would be light and funny - in Vagabond, it is funny, but it's also terrifying, assaulting, and very sad: Mona is nearing the end of her rope, and showing it.

Sandrine Bonnaire, with her lovely, square face and plump little nose, gives a performance that is without fear and above reproach. Any pretenses of a professional, manufactured performance are nonexistent, and the fact that she's denied any kind of flashy "acting" moments makes gaining our sympathy, protective instinct, and love, all the more an admirable feat. The first time we see her alive is in a shot showing her emerging naked from the sea - clean, perhaps virginal, undeniably sexy - and the metaphorical arc is clear. Her death will come after she's decayed, been befouled, stained, and made into a wretch unfit for regular society. Just prior to her death she is seen staggering like a wounded animal, having fulfilled all the qualifications for (merciful?) destruction, having refused all imaginable forms of rehabilitation.

Why does she seek this path, and why does she refuse any kind of opportunity to work, to be loved, or pursue any obvious goal? Is Varda's message that those who don't fit expected roles - or any role whatsoever - are tortured and executed? Mona creates nothing of any lasting value, except one thing: many are affected by their encounters with her, taken aback by her "freedom," and they begin considering their own lives as perhaps wasteful, perhaps a trap. Vagabond may not be the kind of movie you fall in love with, and Mona may inspire as much loathing as sympathy, but to come away unaffected or unprovoked from the experience is to have gone numb. What is your life worth, and who can claim to know you?

Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older