Vagabond

Varda's masterpiece focuses on a dead young woman, Mona, played by Sandrine Bonnaire. We keep returning to her body frozen in a ditch between flashbacks of her itinerant life. The subtle style has since moved into the mainstream: a striking mixture of documentary-style realism, including a voice-over from Varda herself as if she knew the woman, with great formalism employing an acute cinematic eye. 'What a film this is. Like so many of the greatest films, it tells us a very specific story, strong and unadorned, about a very particular person...- it is only many days later that we reflect that the story of the vagabond could also be the story of our lives.' (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)