Vagabond

Atmospheric, cold, and distancing, yet somehow engaging, VAGABOND combines a stylized documentary technique with the fictional vision of writer-director Agnes Varda. The picture opens in the dead of winter, as a farmhand discovers a woman's frozen corpse in a ditch--her long hair a tangle of knots, her skin hidden beneath a well-worn leather jacket and filthy blue jeans. This was Mona (Bonnaire), a fiercely independent "vagabond" whose last weeks are reconstructed in flashback and in "interviews" (both with actors and nonprofessionals Varda found during shooting) with people who met Mona. It soon becomes clear, however, that no one really knew her. Mona is not a ch...