This is screening as part of the Scala Beyond, a six-week season celebrating all forms of cinema exhibition across the UK, from film clubs to film festivals, picture palaces to pop-up venues. You can find more details here at the website.
British director Carol Morley came to prominence with her BAFTA nominated documentary The Alcohol Years in 2000. Since then she has garnered critical acclaim for her debut feature film Edge, the first film produced by Genesis Entertainment, and Dreams Of A Life, a moving and compassionate documentary focussing on the tragic life of Londoner, Joyce Vincent.
Morley has chosen to screen CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 by Agnes Varda in the Auternative strand at the Genesis Cinema. A benchmark of the French New Wave, the film eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer (Corinne Marchand) set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.
Chicago Reader review:
'Agnes Varda's 1961 New Wave feature—recounting two hours in the life of a French pop singer (Corinne Marchand) while she waits to learn from her doctor whether she's terminally ill—is arguably her best work, rivaled only by herVagabond (1985) and The Gleaners and I (2000). Beautifully shot and realized, this film offers an irreplaceable time capsule of Paris, and fans of Michel Legrand won't want to miss the extended sequence in which he visits the heroine and rehearses with her. The film's approximations of real time are exactly that—the total running time is 90 minutes—but innovative and thrilling nonetheless. Underrated when it came out and unjustly neglected since, it's not only the major French New Wave film made by a woman, but a key work of that exciting period—moving, lyrical, and mysterious.'
Jonathan Rosenbaum
A quick clip here.
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