Cleo de 5 a 7

Cleo de 5 a 7, Agnes Varda's classic 1962 work depicts, in near real-time, ninetyminutes in the life of Cleo, a young woman in Paris awaiting the results ofmedical tests that she fears will confirm a fatal condition. The film, whosevisual beauty matches its evocation of early-Fifth Republic Paris, was a majorpoint of reference for the French New Wave despite the fact that Varda neverconsidered herself a member of the core Cahiers du cinema group of critics-turned-film-makers.Ungar provides a close reading of the film and situates it in its social, politicaland cinematic contexts, tracing Varda's early career as a student of art historyand as a photographer, the history of post-war French film, and the lengthyAlgerian war to which Cleo's health concerns and ambitions to become a popsinger make her more or less oblivious. His study is the first to set a reading ofCleo's formal and technical complexity alongside an analysis of its status as avisual document of its historical moment.