"Vagabond" by Agnes Varda

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“Vagabond” by Agnes Varda The character of Mona in Agnes Varda’s “Vagabond” is intentionally ambivalent. Very little of her history is revealed, but it turns out that Mona’s past is not important. What matters are her interactions with the people she meets and their reactions to her lifestyle. I was pleasantly surprised by the filmmaker’s choice to frame the story in a mock-documentary style, as if the person behind the camera is investigating into the life of this girl, but also gets to film inside the memories of the people who met her. This gives the film an opportunity to take a rare objective stance, neither approving nor disapproving of Mona’s lifestyle choices but allowing the other characters and the audience to decide for themselves what they thought. When the story begins, we see the dead body of Mona, the main character, right after she has frozen to death. We then hear the voiceover of a woman, determined to find out more about this girl, and a shot of her emerging from the ocean as the voiceover says “I think she came from the sea.” Mona comes and goes as she wishes, relying sometimes on the kindness of strangers but never returning the favor. Usually, however, she relies on herself. In the first few scenes, it is easy to appreciate, if not admire, Mona’s lifestyle. She is “free,” as one woman says. She doesn’t have to answer to anyone or anything but her own needs, and that’s something we all want, right? Why doesn’t everyone live this way? As the film continues, it is clear that Mona’s life is a mirror for those around her. Though the anonymous young woman envied her freedom and Yolande envied her love life, the more we learn about Mona, the more people around her pity her and are disgusted by her. The herder man is a perfect example—he sees his former life in hers and tries to save her, to make her learn from his mistakes, but of
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