Cléo from 5 to 7

Director: Agnès Varda

1962 / 90min / DCP

One of Varda’s supreme works gives us two crucial hours—actually 90 minutes, though played as though in real time—in the life of a successful French pop singer of the yé-yé vintage, Corinne Marchand’s Cléo, as she waits to hear biopsy results from a doctor that may mean the end of not only her promising career, but also her life. Potentially glum subject matter is given a treatment that fairly crackles with vivacious cinematic energy, matched by a jazzy score courtesy Michel Legrand, who appears rehearsing with Marchand in a lengthy and lovely sequence.