Cleo from 5 to 7
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
‘Mirror Mirror on the wall! Who’s the fairest of them all?” “Thou, O Queen, art the fairest in the land.” These lines from Snow-white echoed in my head while watching ‘Cleo 5 to 7’. I was unnerved to realize that this 1962 French New Wave classic by Agnes Varda is alarmingly relevant even today.
This film happens during a couple of hours in Cleo’s day in almost real time. She is a young singer who ticks all the boxes of desirability. She is tall, thin and beautiful. Though, she doesn’t look at herself that way. She exists in a trap of mirrors, glaring eyes, wigs, hats, dresses, harmful exercises, superstitions. She has created a perception of her which society demands of her. She is so lost in that perception that even the looming news of a life threatening disease doesn’t really shake her beliefs. She is ready to die right that moment but she cannot die ugly. The film addresses the vicious cycle of objectification which creates this unsettling desire of validation in women. It tells us that this society can never let women be themselves and only allows them to be a version they think is desirable. There are so many parallels among today’s society and this existential post war France. The mirrors are replaced by screens. The scrutiny of objectification has skyrocketed. No one is real and everyone is projecting a perception. The hunger for online validation and ego boosts is haunting.
The second half of the film unravels this façade that Cleo puts across. The film turns around when, midway, she gets frustrated and gets rids of all the beautification additions on her. She goes on a solo exploration of the streets of Paris. She meets her friend who is a naked model for sculptors. Her ease and comfort with her body works as a catalyst for Cleo. She could stand for hours in front of male and female sculptors but there was no hostility in that room. There was only appreciation for her body in the form of art. The transformation has started. The mental shackles are coming off. The point of view is flipped. The mirrors are shattered. There is a scene when Cleo gets distressed when her pocket mirror falls and breaks because she thinks of it as an omen of death, however death is cleverly foreshadowed as a metaphor of complete transformation in the opening scene of the film.
The final act of the film shows Cleo bumping into a stranger in a park. He is a soldier who’s being shipped off to fight a war later that day. He is also fighting this fear of death just as Cleo. He is kind and empathetic towards her. The imaginary wall that Cleo operates through, doesn’t exist between them. They look right through each other, eye to eye. There is ease, comfort and trust. This is the most humane we have seen Cleo since the beginning. The conversations are about summer, autumn, flowers and trees. There is no mention of beauty or the norms attached to it. ‘This man’ enables Cleo into her complete transformation.
Cleo 5 to 7 deconstructs the societal pressures of definition of beauty and reminds us that being ourselves can liberate us. The ultimate happiness lies within ourselves and not our exterior appearance. Only if someone could teach this to today’s generation.
