Vagabond (1985 film)
Vagabond (, "with neither shelter nor law") is a 1985 French drama film directed by Agnès Varda, featuring Sandrine Bonnaire. It tells the story of a young woman, a vagabond, who wanders through the Languedoc-Roussillon wine country one winter. The film was the 36th highest-grossing film of the year with a total of 1,080,143 admissions in France. Plot. The film begins with the contorted body of a young woman lying in a ditch, covered in frost. From this image, an unseen interviewer (Varda) puts the camera on the last men to see her and the one  who found her. The action then flashes back to the woman, Mona, walking along the roadside, hiding from the police and trying to get a ride. Along her journey she takes up with other vagabonds as well as a Tunisian vineyard worker, a family of goat farmers, an agronomy professor, and a maid who envies what she perceives to be Mona's beautiful and passionate lifestyle. Mona explains to one of her temporary companions that at one time she was a secretary in Paris but became unsettled with the way she was living, choosing instead to wander the country, free  from any responsibility. Her condition worsens until she finally falls where we first encounter herin a ditch, frozen to death. Critical reception. The movie was acclaimed by critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 100% of 20 critics gave the film a positive review, for an average rating of 8.8/10. Style. The film combines straightforward narrative scenes, in which we see Mona living her life, with pseudo-documentary sequences in which people who knew Mona turn to the camera and say what they remember about her. Significant events are sometimes left unshown, so that the viewer must piece information together  to gain a full picture. "Vagabond" was filmed in the departments of Gard, Hérault and Bouches-du-Rhône. The title. The original French title, "Sans toit ni loi" ("With neither shelter nor law"), is a play on a common French idiom, "Sans foi ni loi", meaning "With neither faith nor law". It also puns on "sans toi" ("without you").