Film Festival Picks | Cleo from 5 to 7 at Hyde Park Picture House

cleo-from-5-to-7

The brilliant thing about the Leeds International Film Festival is the opportunity it provides for audiences to discover for themselves pioneering works of cinema that resonate today. One such is Cleo from 5 to 7, made in 1962 by Agnes Varda, a director closely associated with the Fench New Wave, despite her first feature predating those films by some five years. A dreamy mix of Hollywood-infused fantasy and documentary realism, Cleo from 5 to 7 trails its eponymous pop-singer heroine, in real time, as she walks about the streets and parks of Paris, awaiting the results of medical tests. “In Cleo, I succeeded in reconciling the two aspects of reality that interest me,” said Varda. “The very premeditated and reconstructed aspect, and the documentary style, real life caught in the moment.” It is this immediacy in the film’s natural setting and lighting – what Varda described as “the speed of its inspiration” – which most chimes with the New Wave; that together with a wry sprinkling of cameos (look out for appearances by Jean Luc Godard, his then wife Anna Karina, early New Wave poster-boy Jean Claude Brialy, and grizzled pulp veteran Eddie Constantine). With its evocative score from Michel Legrand (who also appears in the movie as Bob the pianist), Cleo from 5 to 7 is breathless (sic) with richly imagined possibilities. It is a standout film of French cinema, as well as Varda’s career – made even more so by her refusal to repeat herself: her next film would be the bleakly amoral Le Bonheur.

See Cleo from 5 to 7 at Hyde Park Picture House on Tues 8th November at 15:30 and Wed 9th November at 11.00. For more information, visit leedsfilm.com 

Follow @ANMudd