"The poster for Vagabond is an image of a woman with strange, defiant eyes and hair like that of an unkempt animal. In 1985, I was living in New York and going to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. I had a pretty wild roommate named Lizzie who was really into punk rock. She would party all night and sleep all day. This poster was over her bed. You get the picture. She took me to see Vagabond. I still haven’t recovered. This film introduced me to the director Agnès Varda. Varda has a film language all her own, and anyone who wants to direct will learn story and camera technique by watching Vagabond. You’ll have a field day wondering how she constructed the seamless tracking shots. I had the opportunity to interview Varda, and she gave me the following insight with a glint in her eye: “I try to make something look simple.” Vagabond is a seemingly simple story that gets more complex as you watch it. It begins almost like Sunset Blvd. In the French countryside, the dead body of a young woman is discovered. She’s frozen as if she’s been there for days, and we don’t know anything about her. There is voice-over by Varda herself, not the victim. Who is this woman? How did she get here? Varda will explain for us. The movie plays with time, a theme in Varda’s work that she also explores in Cléo from 5 to 7. With tracking shots moving right to left, Varda goes back in time to reconstruct the events that led to this young woman freezing to death in a ditch. Sandrine Bonnaire’s performance is very raw, almost self-destructive, but very effective. There’s a “There but for the grace of God go I” feeling as you watch her. Every act of rebellion, every bottle of booze, every man she has sex with, brings her closer and closer to her demise. Even when someone is genuinely kind to her, you are wondering when the next act of betrayal will come. The world is a tough place, and sometimes the only grace is the dignity of death. Frozen and still."