| Vagabond | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Agnès Varda |
| Written by | Agnès Varda |
| Produced by | Oury Milshtein |
| Starring | Sandrine Bonnaire Macha Méril Stéphane Freiss Yolande Moreau |
| Cinematography | Patrick Blossier |
| Edited by | Agnès Varda Patricia Mazuy |
| Music by | Joanna Bruzdowicz |
| Distributed by | MK2 Diffusion |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 105 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Box office | $8.1 million[1] |
Vagabond (French:Sans toit ni loi, literally "without roof or law") is a 1985 Frenchdrama film written and directed byAgnès Varda and starringSandrine Bonnaire. Beginning with the discovery of a young femalevagabond in a ditch, the film tells—viaflashbacks—the story of her last winter, which she spent wandering around theLanguedoc-Roussillon wine country.
The film premiered at the42nd Venice International Film Festival, where it won theGolden Lion, and was nominated for fourCésar Awards, with Bonnaire winningBest Actress. It was the 36th highest-grossing film of the year in France, with a total of 1,080,143 admissions.[2]
On a cold winter morning in the vineyards of a small village in theGard region of France, the contorted body of a young woman, Mona Bergeron, is discovered in a ditch. The localgendarmes quickly determine she is a vagrant who froze to death, and she is buried in apotter's field.
Mona's last winter is portrayed through flashbacks initiated by interviews with people who had crossed her path. She wanders the country alone, hitchhiking, sleeping in a tent, and doing odd jobs to survive. She experiences hunger, thirst, cold, dangerous situations, and lack of cigarettes orcannabis. She meets a maid who envies her freedom and has short relationships with another vagabond, a family of goat farmers, a professor specialising inplane trees, aTunisian vineyard worker, and a group of homeless youths who spend their time drinking, doing drugs, and committing petty crimes at a railway station. She tells one companion that she left her life as a secretary in Paris to seek freedom and life without responsibility.
Mona's boots fall apart, and after she loses her tent and sleeping bag in a fire at asquat inNîmes, she is left with only a blanket for warmth. She stumbles across a bizarre harvest festival, where she is daubed with wine dregs by men in strange costumes. After escaping, she wanders into a vineyard, where she falls into a ditch. Tired, cold, wet, and now injured, she does not get up, and succumbs to the elements.
The film's original French title,Sans toit ni loi ("without roof or law"), is a play on a common French idiom, "sans foi ni loi" ("with neither faith nor law"). It also puns onsans toi ("without you").
Vagabond combines straightforward narrative scenes, in which we see Mona living her life, withpseudo-documentary sequences in which people who knew Mona turn to the camera and say what they remember about her. Significant events are sometimes left unshown, so that the viewer must piece information together to gain the full picture. It was filmed in the departments ofGard,Hérault, andBouches-du-Rhône.[3]
The film was acclaimed by critics.Roger Ebert gave it four stars out of four, writing: "like so many of the greatest films, it tells us a very specific story, strong and unadorned, about a very particular person".[4] On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 100% of 26 critics' reviews ofVagabond are positive.[5]
| Award | Category | Name | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| César Awards | Best Film | Agnès Varda | Nominated |
| Best Director | Agnès Varda | Nominated | |
| Best Actress | Sandrine Bonnaire | Won | |
| Best Supporting Actress | Macha Méril | Nominated | |
| French Syndicate of Cinema Critics | Best Film | Agnès Varda | Won |
| Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards | Best Foreign Film | Agnès Varda | Won |
| Best Actress | Sandrine Bonnaire | Won | |
| National Society of Film Critics Awards | Best Actress | Sandrine Bonnaire | Nominated |
| New York Film Critics Circle Awards | Best Foreign Language Film | Agnès Varda | Nominated |
| Sant Jordi Awards | Best Foreign Actress | Sandrine Bonnaire | Won |
| Venice Film Festival | Golden Lion | Agnès Varda | Won |
| Volpi Cup for Best Actress | Sandrine Bonnaire | N/a[a] | |
| FIPRESCI Prize | Agnès Varda | Won | |
| OCIC Award | Agnès Varda | Won |
