---
title: "Cléo from 5 to 7"
year: 1962
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/cleo-from-5-to-7"
fi1m_id: "cleo-from-5-to-7"
imdb_id: "tt0055852"
tmdb_id: 499
wikidata_id: "Q1199628"
fi1m_score: 88
critics_score: 83
critics_reviews: 9
published: "2026-09-26T14:26:32.120279+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-26T14:26:32.495189+00:00"
region: "ID"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Directed by Agnès Varda · 1h 30m · Drama

## Identity

Cléo from 5 to 7

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/cleo-from-5-to-7
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** cleo-from-5-to-7
- **IMDb ID:** tt0055852
- **TMDB ID:** 499
- **Wikidata ID:** Q1199628
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055852/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/499, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1199628

**Fi1m score: 88** · Critics 83 from 9 reviews

*In a sentence:* Every mirror in Paris, and one woman slowly learning to look the other way

> Agnès Varda follows a Paris pop singer through an afternoon spent waiting for a medical result, and turns ninety minutes of dread into one of the liveliest films the French New Wave produced. Cléo is hard company for the first half hour. Stay with her.

## Synopsis

Paris, 21 June. Florence Victoire (Corinne Marchand), who sings under the name Cléo, is waiting for the result of a hospital test she fears will say cancer. At five o’clock she visits a fortune teller, Irma (Loye Payen), whose tarot cards say nothing comforting. Her housekeeper Angèle (Dominique Davray) steadies her in a café, takes her hat shopping in a shop lined with mirrors, and gets her home by taxi, where her lover José (José Luis de Vilallonga) drops in and does not stay long. Then her composer Bob (Michel Legrand) and lyricist Maurice (Serge Korber) arrive to rehearse new songs. Cléo has two hours to fill before the doctor will see her, and the film gives her ninety minutes of it, in chapters, each stamped with the time on the clock.

## Review

Florence Victoire, who sings under the name Cléo, has two hours to fill in Paris on 21 June before a hospital tells her whether she has cancer. Agnès Varda gives her ninety minutes of screen time, in chapters stamped with the clock time and the name of whoever each belongs to. It is one of the liveliest films the French New Wave produced, and it begins by making us dislike its heroine.

The opening is in colour: a tarot spread, Irma the fortune teller (Loye Payen) turning cards that get worse as she goes. Varda cuts to black-and-white and to Cléo’s face, and stays there. Corinne Marchand plays her at first as a woman who has confused being looked at with being alive. She cries on the stairs, is soothed in a café by her housekeeper Angèle (Dominique Davray), and cheers up trying on hats in a shop lined with mirrors while Renée Duchateau’s assistant fetches more. We were irritated by Cléo for twenty minutes, and we think Varda meant us to be.

Then the film turns, in one scene. Bob the pianist (Michel Legrand, who also wrote the score) and the lyricist Maurice (Serge Korber) arrive to run through new songs. They tease her, she pouts, and then she sings the last one, “Sans toi”, and the camera moves round her until the screen has gone black and there is nothing but a face and Legrand’s strings. It moved us far more than we were ready for: nothing before it had asked us to take her seriously, and here she is, plainly frightened, singing about being nobody without someone. When it ends she pulls off her wig and walks out.

The Paris she walks into is the other lead. Jean Rabier, with Alain Levent and Paul Bonis, shoots the streets in flat June daylight, and the editors Janine Verneau and Pascale Laverrière cut Cléo’s walk into short shots in which strangers look straight into the lens. A man on the pavement swallows live frogs. In a café she puts her own record on and nobody listens; the tables are talking about the war in Algeria, which has come over the taxi radio. Lucienne Marchand’s taxi driver has stories too. Varda is recording what a city sounds like once you have stopped being the centre of it.

Alyette Samazeuilh dresses Cléo at home in white and sends her out in a plain black dress, and that change says more about her afternoon than her dialogue does. Her friend Dorothée (Dorothée Blanck) poses nude for a sculptor without a flicker of self-consciousness while Cléo watches, astonished that anyone could be looked at and not mind. Later they are shown a silent comedy in which Jean-Luc Godard, credited as the man with black glasses, takes them off and finds the world looks better. It is a joke, and it is the film’s whole idea in two minutes.

Varda lays some things on thick. There is a mirror in nearly every room, Cléo looks into all of them, and the point has been made by the third. The chapter cards get a laugh at first and then feel like a timetable pinned to a wall. José (José Luis de Vilallonga), the lover, gets a kiss and a look at his watch, and is a cardboard rich boyfriend, though he is meant to be. Antoine (Antoine Bourseiller), the soldier on leave she meets in the Parc Montsouris, talks a great deal, and his philosophising will not suit everyone. The last twenty minutes belong to them, and we will leave them there.

Georges de Beauregard and Carlo Ponti produced her as they produced several of the New Wave’s young men, and her film has the jump cuts and street shooting of the films around it. It also has something most of them do not: a woman at its centre who is allowed to be silly and frightened at the same time, and is judged for neither.

It runs ninety minutes, half an hour short of what the title promises. Watch it at five o’clock on a summer evening if you can, and go on disliking her for as long as she lets you.

*Fi1m score 88, published 26 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews are almost uniformly warm. Most critics place the film among the key works of the French New Wave and praise Varda’s Paris above everything else: the streetscapes shot in natural light, the overheard fragments of city life, and the way one woman’s anxious two-hour wait becomes a way of looking at everything around her. Jean Rabier’s photography is singled out more than once, and several notices admire how freely Varda handles time, space, colour and genre, including the playful film-within-a-film.

Reservations are thin and the spread is narrow, with most scores clustered in the eighties and nineties. The Evening Standard is the coolest of the modern notices, valuing the film chiefly as a record of a vanished era, while Slant notes that it resists being claimed as either a feminist or an anti-feminist work. The single mixed review, Bosley Crowther’s for The New York Times in 1962, is the only one from the film’s first release, and its reasoning is not available to us.

## Straight answers

**Is Cléo from 5 to 7 worth watching?**

*Cléo from 5 to 7* is worth watching for anyone with patience for a heroine who is hard company at first, and we scored it 88. Agnès Varda spends ninety minutes with a Paris singer waiting for a hospital result, and the film turns in one song, "Sans toi", which moved us more than we were ready for. The mirrors and chapter cards are laid on thick, but stay with her.

**How long is Cléo from 5 to 7, and what is it rated?**

*Cléo from 5 to 7* runs 1h 30m. It is a drama film.

**Where can I watch Cléo from 5 to 7 in Indonesia?**

*Cléo from 5 to 7* is not on any streaming or rental service in Indonesia at the moment. It is available in 16 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily.

**How does Cléo from 5 to 7 compare to Vagabond?**

*Cléo from 5 to 7* is the lighter and livelier of the two Varda films, while [*Vagabond*](https://film.one/film/vagabond) is the harder and the more moving. Both follow a woman nobody wants to look at and make us look, but Cléo is silly and frightened and eventually likeable, where Sandrine Bonnaire's Mona is unyielding and never explained. Start with Cléo if you want the New Wave's energy; choose Vagabond if you can take being kept at arm's length.

**What should I watch after Cléo from 5 to 7?**

After *Cléo from 5 to 7*, try [*Vagabond*](https://film.one/film/vagabond) (1985, Fi1m 90): Varda again follows a woman nobody wants to look at, and makes us look. Then [*Ikiru*](https://film.one/film/ikiru) (1952, Fi1m 92): A Tokyo clerk gets a diagnosis and, late in the day, starts living; and [*Daisies*](https://film.one/film/daisies) (1966, Fi1m 85): Two Prague girls behave badly in colour; the New Wave with the brakes off.

### Reviews we read (9)

- **Slant Magazine**, Eric Henderson (4/4): The critic finds the film a lively, intellectually rich work that resists easy feminist or anti-feminist categorization. He especially praises Varda’s vivid compositions and distinctive vision of early-1960s Paris. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/cleo-from-5-to-7/)
- **Empire**, David Parkinson (90/100, inferred): The review praises the film as a brilliant, audacious achievement of the French New Wave. It singles out Varda’s inventive manipulation of time, space, colour and genre. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/cleo-5-7-review/)
- **The AV Club**, Keith Phipps (90/100, inferred): Phipps praises the film as a key work of the French New Wave and a brilliant example of Varda’s filmmaking. He singles out how Varda uses Cléo’s anxious wait to reveal the world around her and her changing sense of self. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/cleo-from-5-to-7-dvd-1798194727)
- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (85/100, inferred): Bradshaw calls the film a brilliant, pioneering work of the French New Wave. He praises its beautiful, thrilling Paris streetscapes and the way the tarot scene and overheard city fragments build atmosphere. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/apr/29/cleo-from-5-to-7-review)
- **The Independent** (80/100, inferred): The Independent’s capsule is warmly positive about Varda’s film. It singles out her technical virtuosity and the film’s playful film-within-a-film. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/dvd-cleo-from-5-to-7-for-retail-amp-rental-artificial-eye-2103001.html)
- **Time Out**, Wally Hammond (4/5): The review is positive about Varda’s film. It singles out the beauty of Paris’s natural light, enhanced in the new print. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/cleo-de-5-a-7)
- **Evening Standard** (70/100, inferred): The piece is positive about Varda’s film, calling it a document of a lost-past era. It praises Jean Rabier’s vivid, intense cinematography of Paris. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/spoiled-singer-in-cleo-from-5-to-7-7419699.html)
- **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (65/100, inferred): The review’s verdict and specific praise or criticism are unavailable in the blocked page. No readable discussion identifies what the critic singled out. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1962/09/05/archives/screen-a-french-new-wave-dramacinema-ii-introduces-cleo-from-5-to-7.html)
- **Eye for Film**, Jeff Robson (85/100, inferred): Robson calls the film an astonishing debut and a significant work, warmly recommending it to both newcomers and returning viewers. He especially praises Varda’s vivid, impressionistic portrait of Paris and Corinne Marchand’s convincing character journey. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/cleo-from-5-to-7-film-review-by-jeff-robson)

## Details

- **Director:** Agnès Varda
- **Director:** Agnès Varda
- **Writer:** Agnès Varda
- **Cinematography:** Jean Rabier, Alain Levent, Paul Bonis
- **Editor:** Janine Verneau, Pascale Laverrière
- **Music:** Michel Legrand
- **Costume design:** Alyette Samazeuilh
- **Producer:** Georges de Beauregard, Carlo Ponti
- **Cast:** Corinne Marchand as Florence 'Cléo' Victoire; Antoine Bourseiller as Antoine; Dominique Davray as Angèle; Dorothée Blanck as Dorothée; Michel Legrand as Bob, the Pianist; José Luis de Vilallonga as José, Cléo's Lover; Loye Payen as Irma, the Fortune Teller; Renée Duchateau as The Seller of Hats
- **Runtime:** 1h 30m
- **First release (France):** 11 April 1962
- **Genres:** Drama
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRR0_VJFqwg

## Where to watch in Indonesia

Not streaming, renting or buying in Indonesia at the last check.

Also available in: AR, BE, BR, CL, CO, DK, ES, FI, GB, IN, MX, NL, NO, PA, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Vagabond* (1985), Fi1m 90: Varda again follows a woman nobody wants to look at, and makes us look. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/vagabond.md)
- *Ikiru* (1952), Fi1m 92: A Tokyo clerk gets a diagnosis and, late in the day, starts living. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/ikiru.md)
- *Daisies* (1966), Fi1m 85: Two Prague girls behave badly in colour; the New Wave with the brakes off. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/daisies.md)
- *Before Sunrise* (1995), Fi1m 89: Strangers talk their way across a city until the clock runs out. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/before-sunrise.md)
- *Wanda* (1970), Fi1m 83: Barbara Loden’s drifting heroine is Cléo’s American cousin, poorer and quieter. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/wanda.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/cleo-from-5-to-7