Day 4 of ???

Today’s film of the day is brought to you by the Sunday Scaries…aka ennui. Cléo from 5 to 7 is a 1962 film directed by Agnès Varda. It’s streaming on HBO Max.

Side note: in humble opinion, HBO Max has the best selection of any streaming service, and that’s largely in part due to the Turner Classic Movies hub. It’s great to see a streaming service that is making classic cinema available to people, and not just movies made in the 90s on. That being said, old doesn’t always mean good, but I feel like there is so much potential of new material for people to be exposed to when we include a mixture of decades in our film viewing.

The film follows titular Cléo in real time as she awaits the results of a biopsy. You follow her from a tarot card reading that goes awry, to a cafe with her maid who likes her but also hates her, her glamorous apartment where it’s made very apparent that this film is French New Wave based on the number of cats roaming, followed by more adventures.

At first, I had a hard time empathizing with Cléo because she acts like a spoiled child whose moods sway back and forth fast enough to give you whiplash. But by then end, when she mets soldier Antoine, I found myself with a new understanding of what the movie was trying to portray.

This film is about mortality and reckoning with your own fate. It’s also about fear and how that fear can cause us to push away people we love. Overcoming that fear and accepting that there are only so many things we can control is the path forward.

I really enjoyed this film, and I really enjoyed the cameos that are throughout it. If you’re like me and dealing with a bout of Sunday ennui, I’d recommend giving this one a watch.