WATCH PARTY: Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) dir. Agnès Varda @ Jordan Newby Library

Haven't seen this one, but a friend of mine said it's phenomenal. Have an inkling that the story is sad, but no more than that.

RUNTIME: 89 minutes

SYNOPSIS (via Criterion): Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer (Corinne Marchand) set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

BLURBS:
"The very soul of the French New Wave ... Unlike most of the New Wave directors, Varda was trained not as a filmmaker or as a critic, but as a serious photographer. Try freezing any frame of the scenes in her apartment and you will find perfect composition–perfect, but not calling attention to itself." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

"On the surface, a pseudo-real-time odyssey around Paris in the company of a chanteuse awaiting some critical medical results. However, Corinne Marchand’s fate is just a pretext for Agnès Varda to challenge the rules of classical filmmaking, as she manipulates time, space, colour and genre in each ingenious sequence." - David Parkinson, Empire Magazine

"The last few seconds of Cleo are sheer poetry." - Louis Cook, Detroit Free Press