Cleo From 5 to 7 (Cléo de 5 à 7) (1962)

95% of critics liked it
(21 reviews)
88% of users liked it
(4,642 ratings)

Cleo From 5 to 7 (Cleo de cinq a sept), per its title, concentrates on two hours in the life of a woman. Those hours are desperate ones, in that Cleo, a pop singer, awaits the results of her tests for cancer. Director Agnes Varda stages the film in "real" rather than subjective time, its various… More Cleo From 5 to 7 (Cleo de cinq a sept), per its title, concentrates on two hours in the life of a woman. Those hours are desperate ones, in that Cleo, a pop singer, awaits the results of her tests for cancer. Director Agnes Varda stages the film in "real" rather than subjective time, its various episodes divided into chapters, using significant Tarot cards. During the allotted time, Cleo visits her friends, tries to sing her worries away, spends money, and cries. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 30 min.
Directed By: Agnès Varda
Written By: Agnès Varda
Genres: Art House & International, Drama

In Theaters: Jan 1, 1961 Wide
On DVD: May 16, 2000
Studio: Zenith International Films

Critic Reviews

Ed Halter, Village Voice
Varda transforms the typical French cinema gamine into a complex, tragic figure: the girl who's all too good at playing plaything, forced to face the hollowness of her youth.
Bosley Crowther, New York Times
Generally, Mlle. Varda is so absorbed with her camera stunts, as she is in that scene in the hat shop or when she is screening that comedy short, that the essential concentration on the heroine is neglected and the interest lost.
Derek Malcolm, This is London
Definitely a document from lost-past times.
Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]
The Parisian streetscapes are beautiful and thrilling, and the tarot scene at the beginning, combined with overheard fragments of anxious city lives, give this something of TS Eliot.
Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph
Race to see Agnes Varda's exquisite 1962 New Wave masterpiece, about an hour and a half in the life of a gorgeous, possibly dying chanteuse.
David Parkinson, Empire Magazine
One of the Nouvelle Vague's boldest achievements.
Leo Robson, Financial Times
Like many New Wave films, Cléo from 5 to 7 alternates between ambiguity and charm on the one hand, vagueness and whimsy on the other.
David Parkinson, Radio Times
This remarkable feature typifies all that was good in French film-making during its celebrated New Wave.
Phil Villarreal, Arizona Daily Star
Varda could have stopped after "Cleo From 5 to 7" with the assurance that she'd contributed more to cinema than most directors.
Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
Varda uses her documentary skills to take an objective approach to the material, rather than a sentimental one. It's amazing how much can happen in two hours.
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
... has its spirited moments.
, Time Out
Not every minute is as spirited as Varda would like us to believe, but in the cinema of enchantment this ranks pretty high.
Gabe Leibowitz, eCinemaCenter.com
As good as almost any entry from the French New Wave...a devastating portrait of running out of time...
Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine
By most accounts, photographer-turned-director Agnès Varda is considered the archetypal girl who crashed the big boys' clubhouse, and Cléo from 5 to 7 was the film that paid her membership fee.
Matt Bailey, Not Coming to a Theater Near You
Why Agnes Varda's Cleo From 5 to 7 is not considered a classic of the French New Wave on the order of Truffaut's The 400 Blows or Godard's Breathless is a complete mystery. Well, I tell a lie.

Read all 15 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Stefanie C

while the plot is quite simple, a young capricious woman awaiting test results, this is filmmaking at its finest. varda creates a new fiction by merging real time, cinema verite, and multiperspectives. WOW!
Bruce B

This is from the Criterion Film Collection. I guess its because I am not french or maybe its just a bad run of French Films lately but I think I am going to pass on the french films for a while, I tried I really did, good Black and white background scenes, but is was painfull to hang… More
This is from the Criterion Film Collection. I guess its because I am not french or maybe its just a bad run of French Films lately but I think I am going to pass on the french films for a while, I tried I really did, good Black and white background scenes, but is was painfull to hang in there till the end.
El Hombre I

This film starts Cleo off a rich, spoiled brat, and ends up finding both love and a certain joie de vivre (pardon my fronch). Cleo is a beautiful but somewhat shallow pop singer nervously waiting for the results of a cancer test. The film follows Cléo for two hours as she encounters… More
This film starts Cleo off a rich, spoiled brat, and ends up finding both love and a certain joie de vivre (pardon my fronch). Cleo is a beautiful but somewhat shallow pop singer nervously waiting for the results of a cancer test. The film follows Cléo for two hours as she encounters the important people in her career as well as strangers she meets in between. Real life seems to continue with documentary styled filmmaking that is about looking and being looked at.
Anastasia B

While waiting for the result of a biopsy, the French singer Cléo, visits a fortune teller; drinks coffee and buys a new hat with her housekeeper; is visited by her lover and her composers; visits her model friend Dorothée; learning much from her, who poses nude for sculptors, and a… More
While waiting for the result of a biopsy, the French singer Cléo, visits a fortune teller; drinks coffee and buys a new hat with her housekeeper; is visited by her lover and her composers; visits her model friend Dorothée; learning much from her, who poses nude for sculptors, and a passing soldier named Antoine whom she meets by accident in the park. We follow her for these two hours of her life, as she cruises through the streets of Paris on foot, by cars and taxis, from one place to the next. She finally, becomes a subject instead of being an object: Cleo's progress through the film develops from an almost narcissistic preoccupation with her own image- the first part of the film is full of mirrors and reflections- through a more direct encounter with that world and its inhabitants.
Robert F

Cleo from 5 to 7 was initially baffling, but it's making more sense now I'm getting to know the French New Wave.
Anthony V

French New Wave film about the working of fear into acceptance, set in real time and makes innovative use of reflective images. This is also fantastic snapshot of Parisian streets circa 1962, filmed with such grace and style, you feel as if you've been there.
Christopher B

Fantastic film from the grandmother of the French New Wave. The opening is a knockout with Cleo (or is it Flora?) visiting a fortuneteller to find out her fate. Over the next 90 minutes (told in real time with title cards announcing the time periods) Cleo basically lives her daily,… More
Fantastic film from the grandmother of the French New Wave. The opening is a knockout with Cleo (or is it Flora?) visiting a fortuneteller to find out her fate. Over the next 90 minutes (told in real time with title cards announcing the time periods) Cleo basically lives her daily, spoiled life while the omen of death is always near by. Despite this though, it's a really nice film in the end. Just a great film.