Monday, August 31, 2009
Cleo
Let's talk about how the film presents Cleo as an object in a way that mirrors (to use a word that also has literal meaning in this instance) the way she sees herself and others see her. We can all see how this film does this. Let's point out such in class. That is, stay focused not solely on the story elements but on the filmic aspects as well.
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What I found most striking about Cleo 5 to 7 was the abruptness with which it shifted points-of-view throughout. Obviously the bulk of the film was relayed from Cleo's perspective, but the chapter breaks (as well as a handful of other times, but I can't really recall specifically when) were often accompanied by brief tangents into somebody else's voice-over narration--or, barring that, a cinematic representation of the character's thoughts instead. These all worked to disrupt the idea of a "conventional" narrative flow in the way we've come to expect from New Wave films, albeit in a less jarring way than Godard's more confrontational/Brechtian style. They also (and I would be able to better support this if I could actually clearly remember the specific examples, but OH WELL) lend credence to Astruc's camera-stylo idea. The digressions show an interest in interiority not unlike modernist literature--just as somebody like, say, William Faulkner jumps onto his peripheral characters' streams of consciousness with little warning or immediately apparent reason, so does Varda in Cleo.
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