Cleo from 5 to 7

Varda's 1962 film Cleo from 5 to 7 takes us through a defining slice of life in the main protagonist, Cleo. The film plays out in "real time" with the events lasting the duration of the film, approximately two hours (from 5 pm to 7 pm). The opening scene of the film outlines the situation of the film, she is ill and her illness (cancer) spells death. The film, however, hardly goes beyond its original situation, instead it saunters in the conditional status of emotional shifts, from denial to lamentation to anger to acceptance. I suppose one might say the situation becomes something new when in the end she presses upon herself an acceptance of her fate. Here we might remark on what, for her, this acceptance means, and what forces she is acting and against as she struggles with her fate. Cleo is a pop singer, her songs play on the radio, and people are at her service around the clock. This is not enough. In her move to stardom she has moved beyond herself, she has become a myth. The film works through this struggle, from a woman of myth to her eventual self-demythologization. She loses herself to her sound and image; she becomes a product of her replicated self, many times over, and divided many places over. This multiplicity, this mythic graduation to something(s) larger than life is contested by realization that her fate is one of death. Her myth will outlive her life. This threatens her illusions, her unrealized desire for immortality. She is no longer a "goddess", but rather she is human. She is brought back down to her origins. And when she peruses the city, she rediscovers herself, her roots (the bohemian cafe, her stories with her friend, etc). When she goes to the bohemian cafe and plays her song, the lack of response brings her closer to home, closer to humanity. This fall from myth to man is not an easy move, and that is why the emotional spirit of Cleo from 5 to 7 works so well. It does not bore us because we are affected by these internal and external struggles. And Varda's constant juxtaposition between Cleo's struggle and the on going war in Algeria is no accident. For one, war in itself generally has a mythological status, seen and heard from a distance, it is something based on and perpetuated by a plane of authority which purports itself onto a level above humanity, that is government. Of course, as word of the realities spread the myth deflates, and people protest. With Cleo, her myth too is built up from a distance, she is not the same person as her songs or images, she is myth built up by the recording/entertainment industry. In her case, the myth deflates when she realizes her mortal fate, that she is not the eternal goddess of sound and image, of iconography. This is realized, as abovementioned, in the cafe, also from the new song that she sings in her bedroom, and lastly in the relationship she acquires with the soldier that is supposed to leave for Algeria that day. She feels again, which allows her to finally accept the fact that she has cancer, that she is human.