Cléo de 5 à 7 5.13-5.18

Cléo de 5 à 7 – Cléo from 5.13 to 5.18

Mirrors:  - Cléo looks at her reflection in a small mirror, saying in a voiceover that everything suits her and that she could drunk on trying on hats and dresses.

• Mirrors function as props that reinforce an appearance of beauty Cléo may soon be unable to sustain.
• She tries on a series of hats in a sequence of nearly 90 seconds during which the only sounds are those of traffic on the rue de Rivoli.
• Varda conveys Cléo’s pleasure in the moment with a slow tracking shot that follows her from the pavement outside.
• As she walks through the shop, the glass storefront reflects images of cars, buses and pedestrians.
• Mirrors of various sizes inside the shop reflect Cléo and the street scene behind her.
• The tracking shot ends with a zoom that frames Cléo admiring her reflection in a small mirror on a table, while larger mirrors on the wall reflect the street outside the shop behind her.

Garde Républicaine: - Passing by the street with shiny metal helmets seen through the shop’s windows and reflected in the mirrors.

• The visual complexity of the sequence is complemented by the ambient sound of horse hooves clattering on the asphalt.

This sequence juxtaposes Cléo’s self-absorption in the pleasurable space of the hat shop and the ongoing spectacle of daily life in the street outside.

The mirrors convey Varda’s intention to film the hat shop as a dreamlike sequence, taking place within a type of aquarium.

Leaving the shop: - Angèle chides Cléo reminding her that it is bad luck to wear anything new on Tuesdays and asks for the hat to be delivered to Mademoiselle Cléo Victoire, 6 rue Huyghens.

• This is the first mention of Cléo’s last name and thus the saleswoman recognises who she is. This adulation reassures Cléo as she walks out the shop.

In the taxi: - The return to Cléo’s apartment in the Montparnasse neighbourhood, about 2 miles south.

• Angèle chooses a female taxi driver, she chooses against the first because it supposedly has an unlucky number.
• Cléo mentions that she likes the model of the car which she identifies as a Citroën DS. She realises her comment was a pun, because in French the letters DS are a homonym of the noun déesse (goddess). She says “C’est une déesse, j’aime ça”
• The driver however corrects her, “C’est pas une DS, c’est une ID”.
• This response extends the verbal game because ID is a homonym of idée.
• Angèle shows that she gets the joke as she says “Une idée, comme une drôle idée?”
• The repartee provides a moment of levity among three women whom circumstances bring together.
• It could be argued that the association of terms which ground the word gamealso traces Cléo’s emotional trajectory during the 90 minutes of the film as she evolves from narcissistic divinity towards a clearer idea of herself as a mortal woman.
• Alternating camera angles show Cléo and Angèle from the side with identifiable landmarks such as the Île Saint-Louis and the Conciergerie visible through the open windows in the back.
• The taxi driver turns on the radio; the song on the air is one of Cléo’s recordings, ‘La Belle P…’. When the taxi driver asks Cléo if she likes the song, Cléo asks the driver to stop the music, but the driver misunderstands and stops the taxi in the middle of the street.
• The taxi enters a Left Bank area between the Latin Quarter and St-Germain des Prés. The narrow streets seem to make Cléo ill at ease. As she leans her head out the window, a quick pan turns to a shot of African masks in the window of an art gallery.
• When art-school students parading in costume around the car, Cléo is frightened by a black student with a painted face. Her sense of isolation from the two other women in the taxi replaces the lighter mood that had fuelled their earlier banter with a heavier silence throughout the following sequence.

The effect suggests that the brief distraction of the hat-shop sequence has yielded to Cléo’s anxiety concerning the possibility of fatal illness the fortune teller had seen in her reading of the tarot cards in the prologue.

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