It's comparable in many ways to the finest work that was done during the early days of the New Wave. The basic idea, which Varda never betrays, is to present a drifter who is so much a loner, so completely self-contained, that she is an enigma to everyone she meets. She wanders through the French countryside during winter, bumming rides and staying in one place only until she starts feeling crowded, then moving on. She represents freedom, its advantages and rewards but mostly its consequences. She appears to take no joy in the life of the road.
Vagabond opens with the woman's body being discovered in a ditch.
The rest of the film is an attempt to put together the puzzle of her life, to suggest, through flashbacks and the comments of people she met, what she represented. A young girl says she'd like to be free like her. The owner of a gas station unloads his prejudices about drifters. One woman who picked her up spent enough time with her to form an attachment. There is only Varda's balanced, austere direction and the fine performance of Sandrine Bonnaire, who somehow makes this alienated, doomed, elusive character hold your attention for 105 minutes.