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A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
01
Why this pick
A spare, compassionate roadside portrait of a woman stranded by poverty, with Vagabond’s attention to precarious freedom, social indifference, and the accumulating consequences of isolation.
02
Why this pick
Pasolini’s raw, street-level compassion for an irrepressible woman seeking dignity matches Vagabond’s refusal to sentimentalize marginal life while retaining a fierce sense of its protagonist’s presence.
03
Why this pick
Andrea Arnold shares Varda’s tactile, unsparing closeness to a defiant young woman. Its handheld intimacy, social realism, and refusal to tidy up her contradictions make it a strong companion.
04
Why this pick
A young woman moves through a harsh rural landscape with the same toughness and vulnerability that define Mona. Its wintry atmosphere and clear-eyed view of survival are especially resonant.
05
Why this pick
Though formally more controlled, Akerman’s rigorous attention to a woman’s labor, isolation, and social invisibility complements Varda’s feminist gaze and patient refusal to explain a female life away.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
The film begins with the contorted body of the woman, covered in frost. From this image, an unseen and unheard interviewer (the voice of Varda herself) puts the camera on the last men to see her and the ones who found her. The action then flashes back to the woman, Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire) walking along the roadside, hiding from the police and trying to get a ride. Along her journey she meets and takes up with other vagabonds such as herself as well as a Tunisian vineyard worker, a family of goat farmers, a professor researching trees, and a maid who envies what she perceives to be a beautiful and passionate lifestyle. Mona explains to one of her temporary companions that at one time she had an office job in Paris and did very well for herself, but she became unsettled with the way she was living – choosing instead to wander the country free from any responsibility, picking up what she could to survive as she goes. Throughout the film, Mona's condition seems to become progressively worse until she finally falls where we first saw her, frozen and entrenched in her misery in a ditch.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
Mona Bergeron, a vagabond
Jean-Pierre
Mme Landier, la « platanologue »
Yolande
