The sight of a young woman walking through the pastoral winelands of rural France remains one of the most enduring and complex images in the history of cinema, and is the foundation on which Agnès Varda builds Vagabond (French: Sans toit ni loi), which remains one of her signature films, and one that has come to be seen as amongst her most relevant. The film follows Mona, a young woman of indeterminate background or origin as she sets off on a journey of self-discovery, taking up the life of a vagabond, making her way through the South of France and meeting a range of people along the way, many of them offering her a brief reprieve from the harsh climate during this dreadful winter, and momentarily satiating her hunger and desire to have someone with which she can share her story. One of Varda’s most challenging and haunting films, Vagabond has come to represent a very particular era of her career, one in which she set out to tell stories that meant something to her as both an artist and an activist. In the process, she makes a film that many consider her crowning achievement, at least in terms of showcasing her skillfulness and ability to examine challenging subjects in a way that is still very creative and meaningful, never veering towards being emotionally heavy-handed or unnecessarily dense, a quality we find she made a concerted effort to avoid in every one of her films. A film with a strong sense of direction and a willingness to have frank, difficult conversations that were simply not present in cinema at the time, Vagabond is an incredible achievement, and a personal peak for one of the most important filmmakers of her generation, particularly in how it combines all of the best qualities of her groundbreaking, incredibly influential work spread out over a long, storied career.

It’s difficult to watch a film like Vagabond and not see it as an inherently political statement. Varda was a filmmaker who was driven by the belief that anyone who steps behind a camera and tells a story is contributing to the social, cultural and political discourse of a particular time and place, whether they were aware of it or not. This is abundantly clear in every frame of this film, which joins One Sings, The Other Doesn’t as perhaps her most scathing indictment of how France treats those who live on the margins. She was a self-professed “angry feminist”, and this shows in her work, which takes the form of a brutal and harrowing depiction of a young woman as she ventures through the proverbial wilderness, detached from any home, intent on finding her way through a world that is not equipped to help those in her position, and will actively become hostile to those who are not willing to surrender to its sometimes harsh and psychologically harrowing obstacles. The important aspect to remember about Vagabond is that it doesn’t entirely condone Mona’s journey or her viewpoint – in many ways, she is shown to be hasty and immature, and her refusal to make any change in her life is not concealed from the story. Instead, Varda does show her in a sympathetic light, but never to the point where what she does is entirely excused. This film is about a young woman deciding to abandon all sense of society and instead live a life emancipated from all responsibilities, only coming to realize that this kind of freewheeling, independent existence comes at a cost once she has crossed the point of no return, and is forced to face the consequences. Both as a depiction of youthful defiance and a document about the experiences women in France had to endure at the time, Vagabond is a very powerful statement that is exquisitely handcrafted by Varda as she explores this character and her fascinating existence. 

Vagabond was made at a very interesting point in Varda’s career – she had gradually shifted away from narrative feature films and was experimenting a lot more with documentaries and short-subject filmmaking. Her endeavours with fiction had not entirely stopped, but there was a lot more overlap than in the earlier years of her career. In many ways, this film serves to be one of the examples of a work that bridges the two styles of filmmaking. For the most part, it is a very traditional narrative, following Mona on her journey – the film does begin with the final scene, in which the girl’s dead body is found, and then leaps back to the beginning of the winter, in which we become acquainted with the protagonist and follow her journey. The film then takes the form of a series of chapters, each one roughly defined by the people Mona meets along the way. None of them are in her life for very long, but in nearly all of them, they turn to the camera at some point, breaking the fourth wall and delivering their memories and opinions on this young woman, who seemed to be such an inconsequential part of their lives, but yet still left an imprint, even if only in the form of showing them a different side of society, giving them the sense of comfort in the knowledge that they have managed to avoid such desperate measures. Varda crafts Vagabond as a pseudo-documentary – the story is fabricated and these characters are fictional, but yet even with this knowledge, we feel a sense of authenticity. A lot of the film is drawn from the school of social realism, and Varda ensures that it all comes across as genuine, choosing to focus on the more intimate aspects over those that would be more stylish – and in the process, she makes a film that is visually very striking, but for reasons that are sometimes a lot more ambigious than we initially anticipated, which is all part of her incredible artistic vision.

Varda’s humility had an artistic impact, since she never viewed herself as being a singular voice, and instead focused on making her films communal efforts, which extended to both her narrative and documentary films. She knew that no filmmaker is an island, and did her best to incite a sense of community across all of her work, at least as far as possible. Vagabond is equally a feat of Varda’s direction as it is the performance given by Sandrine Bonnaire, in one of her breakthrough performances. Playing the titular character, she is extraordinary – the role called for someone with a blend of grit and otherworldly complexity, since we are never supposed to view Mona as being entirely of this world, but rather a waif-like entity that moves through it, changing the lives of those she encounters, only to meet a tragic end herself. Considering the entire purpose of the film is to be a portrait of this character as she spends some fleeting moments with various people before exiting their lives, it required a lead who could command the screen, but not steal focus from the supporting cast. We see a tremendous assembly of excellent talent in the peripheral cast – Yolande Moreau, Macha Méril, Stéphane Freiss and Setti Ramdane are all exceptional, and while they may not appear on screen for long, they do leave a profound impression, pushing this film forward and making it such an enigmatic, complex work that is both beautifully poetic and deeply haunting, all through how these characters occupy the screen and leave a profound impression through the simplest but most effective of details.

Vagabond is undeniably one of Varda’s most formally exciting and complex films and one that has come to be seen as quite a major achievement of her feminist leanings, to the point where it’s a defining work in her lengthy, iconic career. However, as is often the case with canonical works, attempting to summarize all how it is an incredible achievement seems impossible, and the only logical response is a more personal one. My admiration for Varda is perfectly encapsulated in this film – the stark images, strong story and fluid movement of the narrative, create such a vibrant and heartfelt depiction of this young woman’s journey, turning into quite a haunting testament to the desire for independence, but the consequences that follow those who go against the status quo. Equal parts a documentary-style realist drama and sobering social statement, anchored by an incredible performance by the always wonderful Sandrine Bonnaire and an exceptional supporting cast and driven by the most sincere desire to achieve something meaningful with the most paltry of resources, Vagabond is one of the most important films of the 1980s, and a cornerstone work of French cinema, both for its artistic vision and underlying commentary, both of which are tenderly and consistently nurtured by Varda, whose forthright, complex sense of direction has never been more profound than it is here, making it one of her greatest achievements, and one that continues to be seen and appreciated decades later, primarily because of its stark and unflinching brilliance and desire to convey a profound message about the human condition and the importance of forging meaningful connections while we each undergo our own unique (meta)physical journeys.