For Film Students and Film Lovers: Cleo from 5 to 7 with scene breakdowns

Note: This is great for college students who are studying film.

Cléo from 5 to 7 is a landmark of French New Wave cinema, directed by Agnès Varda. Unlike many contemporaries who often emphasized male existential crises, Varda turns her lens toward a female consciousness — capturing a portrait of mortality, self-perception, and emotional isolation in real time. The film’s structure, visual language, and feminist undercurrents make it both quietly radical and deeply moving.

Time, Mortality, and Existential Anxiety:

The real-time structure (roughly two hours compressed into 90 minutes of screen time) mirrors Cléo’s inner tension: every minute she waits for her cancer test results feels eternal.
Time isn’t just passing — it’s weighing on her.
This ticking clock motif confronts the viewer with existential dread: what does life mean when death could arrive at any moment?

Cléo starts off superficial and narcissistic, clinging to beauty, fortune, and fame as shields against mortality. But as the film unfolds, she’s slowly stripped of these illusions. Death — once an abstract…