Agnes Varda’s Vagabond has the chilly clinical detachment of an autopsy report,
and the profoundly unsettling reverberations of a vivid nightmare. It begins in
the south of France, as farmers discover in their field the body of a young
woman who has frozen to death. Who was she? How did she come to such an end? A
faceless narrator, determined to answer these questions, seeks clues by
investigating “the last weeks of her last winter.”
What follows is a series of spare, elliptical
flashbacks, as the narrator interviews — or, to be more precise, quietly
listens to — various people who crossed the young woman’s path. But in those
flashbacks, we’re told precious little. Her name, she claims, is Mona. She used
to work as a secretary, but quit because she hated the job. “People bugged me
for a long time,” she says. “But that's over now.”
She says nothing of relatives, friends or
lovers. She has no plans, no ambitions. Occasionally, she latches on to a man
for food, or a warm place to sleep. More often, though, she prefers to stay on
her own, sleeping in abandoned buildings, or in a tent she pitches in the damp
woodlands.
Her aimless wandering evokes diverse
responses. A girl vaguely resentful of her mother’s possessiveness speaks with
envy of Mona’s “freedom.” An ex-hippie, now gainfully employed as a goatherd, chastises
Mona as selfish, lazy and irresponsible. (“You’re not a dropout — you’re just
out! You don’t exist!”) A buttoned-down agronomist, patiently awaiting the
demise of his wealthy, elderly aunt, is terrified by Mona’s matter-of-fact
anarchy. A derelict who camps with her in a deserted mansion is bitter about
her sudden disappearance — but grateful that, after all, she didn’t steal his
transistor radio.
And so it goes, anecdote linking anecdote, as
we trace Mona’s path from a dip in the ocean to a stumble into darkness. She
travels in silence along wintry landscapes, as solitary as the bare trees
clawing at overcast skies. She seeks nothing more than the next ride, the next
resting place, or the next place to cadge a meal. She merely shrugs off the
trauma of being raped by a passing stranger, or the disappointment of a
short-lived relationship with a vineyard worker. For a while, she seems beyond
pain, beyond humiliation. But even Mona has her limits.
The severely beautiful Sandrine Bonnaire gives
an excellent
performance as Mona, betraying not a single
trace of personal vanity as she slips seamlessly into her role. Every physical
detail — everything from the dirty fingernails to the tattered leather jacket —
is just right. More important, though, is Bonnaire’s impressive ability to
convey Mona’s surliness and cynicism without obscuring the character’s naked
vulnerability.
Vagabond
doesn't try to explain Mona. Indeed, the narrator’s inability to comprehend
Mona’s motives, or to discover the wounds that fester in the dark corners of
her heart, is the whole point of the film. In Varda's view, some people quite
simply are unknowable. They plod lemming-like toward self-destruction with the
ruthless efficiency of a guided missile. And nothing anyone can do or say can
deter them from their course.
There are few things in life more disturbing —
and, yes, more threatening — than the spectacle of someone who just doesn’t
give a damn. But, much like a violent traffic accident or a spectacular natural
disaster, the spectacle has a mesmerizing fascination.
