Bichromatic

Or bitch-romantic, as freespiral has it. My feeble attempt at Marcus's challenge. If only the hydrant was a bit closer to the door!

This evening we went to see Agnès Varda's film Sans Toit ni Loi, which caused a great stir when it was released in 1985. Despite its classic status we'd never seen it. It's an extraordinary film; the 18-year-old Sandrine Bonnaire won a César for her unstinting portrayal of Mona, a young woman wandering the roads of Languedoc to die a lonely death (not a spoiler; the first scene of the film features her frozen corpse lying in a ditch).  Mona's absolute freedom is literally the death of her. 

You get the idea; it's yet another grim film! But it's also surprisingly beautiful in its emptiness. Many of the people in it are not professional actors; they are basically playing themselves, and Varda didn't write a script; she got financing based on a two-page synopsis. Yet she was absolutely meticulous in her filming. Many scenes are almost monochrome, or just have one spot of colour. She went to the extreme of painting an orange bench in Nîmes station grey to fit her colour scheme, much to the annoyance of the station master. Definitely essential viewing for cinephiles.