Line #27 Film/CleoFrom5To7


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Cleo.jpg]]
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3	->''"As long as I'm beautiful, I'm even more alive than the others."''
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5	''Cleo from 5 to 7'' is one of the first films by Creator/AgnesVarda, a UsefulNotes/FrenchNewWave director. It depicts two hours in the life of a woman wandering throughout Paris on June 22, 1961.
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7	As ''Slant'' [[http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=734 puts it]], "Photographer-turned-director Agnes Varda is considered the archetypal girl who crashed the big boys' clubhouse, and ''Cléo from 5 to 7'' was the film that paid her membership fee."
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9	Florence Victoire a.k.a. Cleo is a young singer whose career has recently taken off. She has just been told she might have cancer and is anxiously awaiting her biopsy results, which she will get at 7 PM. She visits a FortuneTeller, whose tarot reading increases her fears rather than reassuring her. She then goes to a café with her maid, and then to her luxurious apartment where she receives the visit of her lover, a wealthy older man, and later of her two songwriters. She goes back out and picks up her friend, who works as a nude model in a {{sculpture\|s}} workshop. They go to a cinema where they watch a short silent film from the projectionist's room. After they part, she goes to Parc Montsouris, where she's chatted up by a talkative but pleasantly earnest soldier whose leave is about to end. He accompanies her to the hospital where she picks up her inconclusive biopsy results. And that's it.
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11	The film develops several themes: The fear of death, the possibility of living a meaningful life, the relations between human beings, the perception of women. But it is also a quasi-documentary depiction of Paris in the early 1960s.
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14	!!Contains examples of:
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16	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The story ends with the doctor prescribing two months of radiation, and Cleo declares that for the first time she doesn't feel afraid.]]
17	* BrainlessBeauty: This is how most people perceive Cleo, and the audience's challenge is to see beyond the stereotype without Cleo herself making it any easier with her flighty, self-absorbed attitude.
18	* TheCameo: Creator/JeanLucGodard (in a rare appearance without his trademark sunglasses), a friend of Varda's, and Creator/AnnaKarina appear in the silent film sequence.
19	* DeliberatelyMonochrome: The entire film is in black and white, except the opening scene.
20	* DrosteImage: Produced ''Film/CitizenKane'' style when Cleo walks between two opposing mirrors.
21	* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: There's Cleo, and we're going to be in her company [[ExtremelyShortTimespan from 5 to 7 p.m.]]
22	* FilmWithinAFilm: The movie within the movie, an odd little silent film that Cleo and her friend watch that is done InUniverse in a {{Retraux}} 1920s style.
23	* {{Foreshadowing}}: The film is peppered with symbolic references to death, such as the words "Deuil" (mourning) and "Pompes funèbres" (funeral parlor) appearing in the background, a mirror breaking and Cleo's black dress.
24	* FortuneTeller: Her tarot reading at the beginning of the movie is the only scene shot in color. Of course she draws the Death card.
25	* GayParee: Displayed in a naturalistic way. To quote the ''Slant'' review again: "Varda captures the fairy-tale essence of early '60s Paris with a vivacity and richness that rivals [[Creator/JeanLucGodard Godard's]] ''Breathless''."
26	* HeelRealization: Cleo realizes her selfishness and learns to be braver when meeting a soldier who's due to return to Algiers.
27	* InnocentFanserviceGirl: Cleo's friend is completely unselfconscious about posing nude for a whole room of mostly male sculptors.
28	* IrisOut: The FilmWithinAFilm end with this an iris out effect.
29	* NoPlotNoProblem: The whole plot is just 2 hours in the life of a young singer waiting for medical test results.
30	* OnscreenChapterTitles: The movie is separated into chapters, each announced with an on-screen title card.
31	* OrbitalShot: A slow camera turn lasting a good 40 seconds around Cleo's head as she tries on a hat.
32	* OutOfGenreExperience: The naturalistic SliceOfLife narrative is interspersed in its middle part by a song number.
33	* RealTime: In theory, at least: The film is called ''Cléo from 5 to 7'', and it follows Cleo over about 100 minutes, as the exact time stamps on the chapters show. But the plausibility of real time is stretched on occasion, like in the scene where she's rehearing her song, and she takes about two seconds to change from a white nightie into a black dress. When one considers all that Cleo does over the course of the movie--visit a tarot reader, try on hats, rehearse a song, meet her lover, hang out with her model friend, watch a short film, walk in a park, strike up an acquaintance with a soldier, go back to the hospital, get her diagnosis--it does strain credibility that everything could happen in an hour and a half.
34	* RepeatCut: On a dazed Cleo's face as she walks down the stairs after a most disturbing tarot reading.
35	* ShoutOut: The silent movie is a reference to the films of Creator/BusterKeaton. A poster for the surrealist classic ''Film/UnChienAndalou'' is also visible in the background at one point. ''Literature/ElmerGantry'' is advertised on a theater marquee.
36	* SplashOfColor: The shots of the fortune teller's table--the table, the cards, the hands of Cleo and the fortune teller--are in color. Everything else is black and white.
37	* SliceOfLife: Not quite two hours in the life of a young woman who is stressing over a doctor's test.
38	* TarotTroubles: Well naturally Cleo draws the Death card.

Context Film / CleoFrom5To7