A landmark of French New Wave cinema: intimate, formally inventive, and emotionally alive. Its real-time structure turns a simple waiting period into a vivid meditation on mortality, identity, and the way a city can mirror a state of mind.
95% ★★★★★ (31,752)
Cléo from 5 to 7
Where to watch: Max
Movie · Drama · NR
1962 · 1h 30m · ★ 95% (31.8K)
The whole world... has made an appointment with...
Director: Agnès Varda
Starring: Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominique Davray
Overview
Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer 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 and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.
Director
Agnès Varda
Production
Rome-Paris Films, Ciné-Tamaris
Cast
Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominique Davray, Dorothée Blanck, Michel Legrand, José Luis de Vilallonga, Loye Payen, Renée Duchateau, Lucienne Marchand, Serge Korber, Robert Postec, Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, Emilienne Caille, Eddie Constantine, Sami Frey, Danièle Delorme, Yves Robert, Alan Scott, Georges de Beauregard
Where to watch
Max
Curator Review
Verdict
A landmark of French New Wave cinema: intimate, formally inventive, and emotionally alive. Its real-time structure turns a simple waiting period into a vivid meditation on mortality, identity, and the way a city can mirror a state of mind.
Best for
fans of French New Wave and 1960s art cinema
viewers who like character studies with formal experimentation
people drawn to Paris-as-character filmmaking
audiences interested in existential, quietly emotional dramas
Skip if
you want a plot-heavy film with constant action
you dislike elliptical, observational storytelling
you prefer straightforward melodrama without stylistic detours
Overview
Cléo from 5 to 7 is one of cinema’s great time-bound portraits, using a single afternoon to chart a woman’s shifting sense of self. What begins as anxious waiting gradually opens into a richer, more humane encounter with the city, with strangers, and with the possibility of seeing herself differently.
Worth noting
Agnès Varda blends documentary texture, street-level observation, and emotional precision with remarkable ease. The film feels light on its feet even as it circles serious dread, and that balance is part of its enduring power.
Bottom line
It’s also a beautiful Paris film without being merely a postcard. The streets, faces, and passing moments all feel alive, and the movie’s real achievement is how it turns uncertainty into something tender, searching, and deeply modern.
Top Letterboxd reviews
maria (4★) · 6022 likes
the perfect movie to watch before the corona test results kick in
matt lynch (5★) · 5910 likes
"Everybody spoils me. Nobody loves me."
James (Schaffrillas) (4★) · 5722 likes
This deserved Oscars for Cinematography and also Supporting Actor for the man who ate 3 frogs and projectile vomited
Sam (3.5★) · 4968 likes
Misleading title but I guess Cleo From 5 to 6:30 wasn't as catchy.
Sally Jane Black · 4431 likes
Ultimately, all you need is one meaningful connection.
1965 · Drama, Thriller, Horror · 1h 45m · NR · ★ 85% (159.1K) · Where to watch: fuboTV, Midnight Pulp
A psychologically charged study of isolation and dread, sharing the sense of a woman’s inner crisis becoming cinematic form.
Themes
mortality anxiety, female self-discovery, real-time narrative, urban wandering, identity and performance, existential dread, human connection, art and observation
Topics
French New Wave, real-time, existential drama, female protagonist, Paris, 1960s cinema, art-house, coming-of-age, melancholy, modernist