Legendary director Agnes Varda delicately interweaves New Wave existentialism and feminism in this beautiful, heart-breaking masterpiece from 1962. As the title suggests, the film follows a young Parisian singer, Cléo, for two hours of her life, as she fights with fears that she may have cancer. Both ephemeral and heart-breakingly real, Cléo from 5 to 7 expertly and unsentimentally portrays the complexities and insecurities of womanhood, taking a character that in another film would be the one-dimensional object of male desire, and transforming her into a complex, fully realised woman.
