Essential Arthouse: Vagabond (1985)
A young woman's body is found frozen in a ditch. Through flashbacks and interviews, we see the events that led to her inevitable death. (NR, 105 min.)
Showtimes
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
7:00 PM
Essential Arthouse: This monthly series showcases “essential arthouse” films everyone should see on the big screen. Arthouse is a film genre which encompasses films where the content and style – often artistic or experimental – adhere with as little compromise as possible to the filmmakers’ personal artistic vision. This series is Free for Members.
Sandrine Bonnaire won the Best Actress César for her portrayal of the defiant young drifter Mona, found frozen to death in a ditch at the beginning of Vagabond. Agnès Varda pieces together Mona’s story through flashbacks told by those who encountered her (played by a largely nonprofessional cast), producing a splintered portrait of an enigmatic woman. With its sparse, poetic imagery, Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi) is a stunner, and won Varda the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. [Janus]
Starring: Sandrine Bonnaire, Macha Méril, Stéphane Freiss
Director: Agnès Varda
Language: French
Genre: Drama
"An unmissable film from this great director."
— Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
"Visually beautiful, tragic drama."
— Michael E. Grost, Classic Film and Television
"A masterpiece, clearly one of the finest films in many a year."
— Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune
"The road movie takes a somber turn in this austerely beautiful 1985 French drama by Agnes Varda."
— Peter Keough, Chicago Reader
"A remarkable and chilling example of social-realism enshrined in a cautionary fable of a broken society."
— Rob Aldam, Backseat Mafia
"Through this tough, memorable film, Ms. Varda reaches for our humanity with a force that very few movies can muster."
— Julie Salamon, Wall Street Journal
"Varda has a photographer’s eye, and the beautiful scenes she keeps laying at our feet are as full of life as Mona’s unfettered laugh."
— Elise Nakhnikian, The House Next Door
"Agnes Varda's anatomy of a female vagabond, beautifully played by Sandrine Bonnaire, is captivating, haunting and uncompromising."
— Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com
"What a film this is. Like so many of the greatest films, it tells us a very specific story, strong and unadorned, about a very particular person."
— Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"Features a career-defining performance from Sandrine Bonnaire as Mona, a young woman who decides to live her life free from the trappings of modern society."
— Marya E. Gates, Substack
"Varda, supported by an austere and realistic style, elaborates a very profound feminist treatise on the freedom of women and the way it is perceived by certain social circles."
— Yasser Medina, Cinefilia
"Agnes Varda's sturdy neo-realistic social study of a fiercely individualistic young woman, who happily lives a hobo's life on the road in France, is nothing short of a masterpiece."
— Cole Smithey, ColeSmithey.com
"So many people are lost, and we barely notice. In making this film, Varda has ensured that its viewers will remember—if not understand—at least one of them."
— Marilyn Ferdinand, Alliance of Women Film Journalists
"There were few female heroines that made sense to me growing up in the eighties, an era whose filmic representations were overwhelmed by John Hughes and his bubblegum suburbia, where misunderstood girls were eventually sexualized and therefore welcomed to the ranks of fitting in. That kind of conformist resolution was unsettling to me. Agnès Varda finally gave me a female protagonist who didn’t compromise."
— Andrea Kleine, The Paris Review
"Vagabond is a film which combines everything that Varda does best: a story ripped from the headlines which she refuses to fully fictionalise; a strong female lead who battles against a patriarchal system and against people who can’t comprehend her anxieties; a love of those liminal spaces between cities, roads, buildings – locations which appear as blank spaces on maps; a belief in building stories through small nuance rather than sweeping gestures."
— David Jenkins, Little White Lies
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