Cléo from 5 to 7

Cléo from 5 to 7 - The Journey of a Woman's Liberation

 Mirrors. Inquisitive eyes. Judging faces. The world seen through the eyes of a woman - This could be a possible synopsis of this documentary-esque film. The world judges women's physical appearance much more harshly than men. When we see the face of a woman we notice little imperfections much more quickly than when we see in men's faces, even getting some pleasure out of pointing them out - a wrinkle, a freckle, a mole, any imperfection. Women have one kind of beauty - the beauty of a girl (or young woman). When they get old, at the eyes of society, they lose their beauty. This doesn't happen to men. For them, there are two kinds of beauty - the boy (or younger man) and the man (or older man). When men get older, their beauty transforms, but they are still beautiful to the eyes of the general society. Women don't have this luxury. This makes women be much more critical and unhappy about their looks than men. As Cléo, the main character in this film, says: "Ugliness is a kind of death". This makes women look at themselves with much more insecurity and be much more centered on their physical appearance. Agnés Varda puts us in the shoes of a beautiful famous singer, who is constantly scrutinizing her looks and constantly feeling judged by others, all this while she awaits the results of a medical test for a probable stomach cancer. Varda shows us the journey that this woman makes in two hours (as stated in the title) that will change her life - the feminist journey of a woman's liberation from the control of a patriarchal society.

 The film starts when Cléo (played by Corinne Marchand) goes to a fortune teller. She is extremely worried about her medical test results. The fortune teller asks her to pick nine tarot cards from a deck spread across the table: three for the past, three for the present, three for the future. We learn that Cléo had a young lover that influenced her career, there's a widow who is close to her and gives advice and devotion to her. We learn that that widow told Cléo to leave her hometown so that she could have a freer and more successful life, which resulted in her meeting a man who made her artistic career possible. The fortune teller says that he pays a lot of attention to her. Cléo answers her that he's kind but she hardly sees him. The older woman tells her that the man is looking after her and gives her sound advice. But she also sees evil forces: a doctor, a change, a struggle. Then she goes on to tell Cléo that there isn't much hope for marriage in her future. She sees a journey and three fates. Then the fortune teller asks Cléo to pick four more tarot cards from the deck. The fortune teller continues to see a change in Cléo's life, but she also sees suffering - illness in upon Cléo. The older woman also sees a new acquaintance - Cléo will meet a young and talkative man who will amuse her. However, there's something wrong - an upheaval. The fortune teller asks Cléo to take one more tarot card. The card she takes has a skeletal being with a scythe - Death. Cléo becomes distressed by that terrible card. However, the fortune teller tells her that the card doesn't necessarily mean death. It means a total transformation of her entire being.

 The reason I'm describing in such detail this first scene is that it's probably the most important scene in the entire film. This scene holds the key to understanding this film. In it, we learn about Cléo's past as a girl from a small town with big ambitions to become a famous singer and how she was helped by a woman in order to achieve this. We learn that she has a relationship with a man who is also her sponsor. And we learn about her illness. This scene is also important to understand future scenes. But I'll get to that later.

 First things first.

 When Cléo exits the fortune teller's apartment, her journey begins.

 All throughout the film, there's an object that keeps appearing - mirrors. This represents the way that society continuously judges women's physical appearance, presenting ideals of beauty that women must follow, forcing women to constantly check on how they look in order to appease to other's sense of beauty. The city of Paris, where the story unfolds, is almost like a giant mirror. There are mirrors in a café, a hat shop, in the streets, in her apartment, even people's eyes act as mirrors, where Cléo sees her image reflected. She keeps looking into these mirrors, judging herself, checking for any little flaw, hiding in an idealistic image of beauty.

 The first mirror appears right at the entrance of the fortune teller's building when she exits it. Cléo admires herself in it and thinks, reassuring herself: "Wait, pretty butterfly. Ugliness is a kind of death. As long as I'm beautiful, I'm even more alive than the others." This thought is very important to understand Cléo's personality. She is very self-conscious and has an almost pathological obsession with how she looks. She keeps checking herself in mirrors all throughout the film. She is trying to hide the illness, the rot, the depression. She's beautiful, and that's all that matters. This is because society values what is outside much more than what is inside. As long as she's beautiful, she's alive in the eyes of others. She can be ill, but to be ugly is to be socially dead. Later in the film, she comments, when referring to her stomach cancer, that she prefers it there than anywhere else because at least people can't see it.

 All throughout the film, superstition plays a big role. This could represent the ways that society creates in order to hold women back from their full potential. Cléo fears everything. Her maid, Angèle, feeds this fear, and, in a way, controls her through that fear. She doesn't allow Cléo to wear a hat she just bought because it brings bad luck to wear something new on a Thursday. She chooses a taxi for Cléo basing her decision on lucky numbers. Angèle represents the way certain women (normally older and more experienced ones) contribute to a patriarchal society (similarly to the character of Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid's Tale). She takes care of a younger woman and educates her into being orderly and submissive. She tells Cléo not to mention her illness to her lover when he comes to see her because "men hate it". Angèle tells Cléo that she has to be accommodating, she has to please men. But Cléo questions this - already a sign of rebellion. She questions if he takes her seriously and says she wants to leave him. Angèle says that that is not true, she tells her he loves her very much and that he's a good lover. "How do you know?", asks Cléo, defiantly.

 Slowly, Cléo starts to crack and rebel. She can't keep with her life like this - covering herself, being nice, smiling, faking. Always controlling herself, always checking her appearance. During a rehearsal, where she is constantly being picked on by the musicians and not being taken seriously, she gets angry. She takes off her white dress, changes to a black one and yanks her wig, revealing her real hair. This is the first moment of Cléo's rebellion. She doesn't want to conform anymore.

 She goes out into the streets. She looks at a mirror and thinks: "I can't see my own fears. I always think everyone's looking at me, but I only look at myself. It wears me out". This is where the moment of "wokeness" begins. She realizes that she keeps worrying about what others think of her and so she keeps looking at only herself and her looks, becoming submissive to the ideas and manipulation of others, not realizing what goes inside her. Her narcissism makes her susceptible to the manipulation of society.

 Afterward, she walks into a café. There, she looks at people and eavesdrops on conversations. She slowly transforms and goes from the one being observed to the one observing. Still, she clings to her insecurities. She sees everyone looking at her in the streets - but is this only an effect of how society demands women to be more judgemental about their appearance?

 There is one very important encounter. She visits a friend whose job is to do nude sculpture modeling. This impresses and intrigues Cléo. It impresses her that a woman would have the courage to pose naked in front of other people because she fears that someone will find a fault in her body if she does that - someone will find her true self, which isn't beautiful.

 During her time with Dorothée, her friend, something happens to Cléo. She releases herself. Slowly she is freer and more active. She observes the people walking in the streets and in a station. Agnés Varda referred to this change from being observed to becoming the observer as Cléo's feminist act. She's no longer a passive agent of society, she takes on an active role. The last release of her self-consciousness is when her friend drops and breaks her mirror. This terrorizes Cléo, who is very superstitious. We see her terrorized face in the reflection of the fragments of the broken mirror. However, this image is a metaphor. In this moment, Cléo breaks away from the constraints of patriarchal control over her. She breaks away from a self-criticism imposed by society. From now on, she's going to be able to free herself. She looks for the last time at her reflection in the broken symbol of patriarchal control over her.

 And finally, the last part of the film, where she meets "a young and talkative man who will amuse her" - the character who will help Cléo release herself from her own prejudices towards herself, the remains of the patriarchal society in herself.

 It's in the Montsouris Park ("Montsouris makes you smile when you say it, like cheese.") where she finds this fellow - Antoine. He approaches her in the park. They are alone. All throughout the film, we see men approaching Cléo, eyeing her with lust and treating her like an object, harassing her and touching her. But this man is different. He doesn't make any move that would attack her dignity. He amuses her. He even shows her a certain fragility and is honest, as if he isn't afraid to show his true self (patriarchal society also imposes rules on men, such as, men have to act tough and strong and can't show fragility). He's a soldier who is heading to Algeria that night ( the film is set in the heat of the Algerian War).

 They talk. Their conversation is different from Cléo's previous conversations with men. She isn't being talked at. They are talking as equals - she hears him, he hears her. During their conversation, she reveals to him (and us) that her name isn't Cléo - that's just her artistic name. Her real name is Florence. She drops a (metaphorical) veil and reveals herself to him. He says he prefers her real name - he prefers the real her, not a product of society. They also talk about her friend who poses nude. She says she doesn't like nudity. She says that nudity is indiscretion, the night, the illness, the shame. He disagrees. He says nudity is love, birth, the dawn, purity, honesty.

 The importance of this character is that he helps and guides Cléo into accepting her flaws and freeing her from the constraints of the pressure of societal norms. Nudity is touching according to him because nudity is the truth. With nudity there's nothing covering anything, there's no secret, there's nothing hidden - of course, and I have to stress this, when they talk about nudity, they talk in a metaphorical way. It's also important to point out that this character, who helps Cléo become a free and feminist woman, is male. Perhaps here Agnés Varda tells us the feminist role of men. Men must support and help women in their struggle for dignity and in their feminist fight against patriarchy - after all, men are also negatively affected by a masculinistic society.

 And so, there's an upheaval in Cléo's life. Cléo seizes to judge her appearance because she isn't trying to hide anything anymore. She's her true self - with no masking, with no reflections, with no wigs. And that's the big message Varda is telling us - women shouldn't be afraid to show their true selves and will only get true equality when they are judged in the same way that men are judged. Society judges women more harshly and doesn't take them so seriously as a way to control them and "keep them in their place". The liberation of women is made through the acceptance of the female flaws and seeing the beauty in them - just like we do with men.

 When they arrive at the hospital and hear the results of Cléo's medical tests, they walk away liberated, as equals, both facing possible death - him facing it in war, her with cancer. Are they going to die? Will he survive the war? Will she survive her cancer? It doesn't matter because there has happened a total transformation of Cléo's entire being. She's free. She's no longer the target of judgments (or at least she doesn't care about them). She no longer fears anything. She has finally found her true happiness and confidence in herself. She has become a liberated feminist woman. She went from being a woman obsessed with mirrors and how people see her to a woman who looks at the world and other people, learning and taking an active role in society. She's free.

 "I've the feeling my fear has gone", Cléo says, "I've the feeling I'm happy".