While the likes of Godard and Truffaut farted around in their no-girls-allowed New Wave treehouse, Agnès Varda was quietly making films like this delicate, real-time character study of a self-obsessed pop princess (Corinne Marchand) nervously awaiting the results of a cancer biopsy.
It has the jump cuts, dolly zooms, jazzysoundtrack and va-va-voom Parisian setting – but as Cleo kills time shopping for hats, it’s far less pretentious than it might sound.
A poignant, exquisitely detailed paean to just getting on with life in the face of death.
