Sans toit ni loi

Vagrant Mona wanders through the harsh winter landscape of southern France, heading nowhere in particular. She experiences freedom, but also envy, incomprehension and patriarchal violence. Her death, which opens the film, leaves behind just the memories and feelings that she provoked in her fleeting acquaintances – inspired by the narration of Citizen Kane. The traces of the feminist battles for liberation following 1968 which Varda returned to in the midst of 80s turn to conservatism are now a mere reminiscence in Mona’s red clothing. In the film, it blends more and more with the blue tones of the winery, expressing the sense of stasis that extends to both Mona’s wanderings and the women’s movement. Awarded the Golden Lion in 1985, the film has lost none of its topicality, as Maren Ade also underlined in 2023: “A drifter who reveals little and becomes a surface of reflection for the people she meets. In interviews, the people she fleetingly met try to say something about her, but end up only saying something about themselves. […] To follow a female character who doesn’t explain herself and who the film doesn’t try to explain either, is something special to me to this day.” Kelley Conway (Madison) places the film in the context of the feministic productions of Chantal Akerman and Coline Serreau.