| Vagabond | |
| Director: | Agnès Varda |
| Producer: | Oury Milshtein |
| Starring: | Sandrine Bonnaire Macha Méril Yolande Moreau |
| Music: | Joanna Bruzdowicz Fred Chichin |
| Cinematography: | Patrick Blossier |
| Editing: | Patricia Mazuy Agnès Varda |
| Distributor: | MK2 Diffusion |
| Runtime: | 105 minutes |
| Country: | France |
| Language: | French |
| Gross: | $8.1 million[1] |
Vagabond (French: '''Sans toit ni loi''', "with neither shelter nor law") is a 1985 French drama film directed by Agnès Varda, featuring Sandrine Bonnaire. It tells the story of a young woman, a vagabond, who wanders through the Languedoc-Roussillon wine country one winter. The film premiered at the 42nd Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion. Vagabond was nominated for four César Awards, with Bonnaire winning Best Actress. The film was the 36th highest-grossing film of the year with a total of 1,080,143 admissions in France.[2]
The film begins with the contorted body of a young woman lying in a ditch, covered in frost. From this image, an unseen interviewer (Varda) puts the camera on the last men to see her and the one who found her. The action then flashes back to the woman, Mona, walking along the roadside, hiding from the police and trying to get a ride. Along her journey she takes up with other vagabonds as well as a Tunisian vineyard worker, a family of goat farmers, an agronomy professor, and a maid who envies what she perceives to be Mona's beautiful and passionate lifestyle. Mona explains to one of her temporary companions that at one time she was a secretary in Paris but became unsettled with the way she was living, choosing instead to wander the country, free from any responsibility. Her condition worsens until she finally falls where we first encounter herin a ditch, frozen to death.
The film was acclaimed by critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 100% of 23 critics gave the film a positive review, for an average rating of 8.8/10.[3]
Vagabond combines straightforward narrative scenes, in which we see Mona living her life, with pseudo-documentary sequences in which people who knew Mona turn to the camera and say what they remember about her. Significant events are sometimes left unshown, so that the viewer must piece information together to gain a full picture.
It was filmed in the departments of Gard, Hérault and Bouches-du-Rhône.[4]
The original French title, Sans toit ni loi (With neither Shelter nor Law), is a play on a common French idiom, "sans foi ni loi", meaning "with neither faith nor law". It also puns on sans toi ("without you").
| Award | Category | Name | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best Film | |||
| Best Director | Agnès Varda | ||
| Best Actress | |||
| Best Supporting Actress | |||
| Best Film | Agnès Varda | ||
| Best Foreign Film | Agnès Varda | ||
| Best Actress | Sandrine Bonnaire | ||
| Best Actress | Sandrine Bonnaire | ||
| Best Foreign Language Film | Agnès Varda | ||
| Best Foreign Actress | Sandrine Bonnaire | ||
| Agnès Varda | |||
| Sandrine Bonnaire | |||
| FIPRESCI Prize | Agnès Varda | ||
| OCIC Award | Agnès Varda |