Feminist Counter-Cinema in "Vagabond"
"Unlike in most American road movies, this road is no refuge from home, no vehicle of revelation or redemption or critical insight--except, perhaps, for the audience, testimony to the film's unique form of cultural critique, which occurs not so much within the film but rather as a result of watching it." (Laderman, 270)
In Agnes Varda's film Vagabond (1985), it became clear from the beginning how a feminist cinema could work to counter the male gaze. The tracking shots in the film are really telling in that they tend to follow other objects in the mise-en-scene, as opposed to our main character, Mona. Oftentimes, Mona enters the mise-en-scene or leaves it while the camera stays still. She is just passing through in this sense. She is not necessarily telling us her story, the interviewees help to tell it juxtaposed with flashbacks to Mona's travels. Another interesting point is that many of the men in the plot are not to be trusted. The mechanic lies about raping Mona in her tent and the truck driver lies about kicking her out because she would not sleep with him. A man who claims "I've been watching you" rapes Mona in the woods after she is dropped off. These speak to the different things a woman has to worry about while on the road as opposed to things a man has to worry about. They are quite different and even though Mona chooses not to sell her body or use it in ways that the character of Rebecca does in Girl on a Motorcycle, it still gets abused in situations that are out of her control since she has chosen to drift by herself. Mona is never sexualized in the same way that Rebecca is and this is done through the camera work which works against a male gaze and achieves a different effect in its portrayal of Mona. Mona's apathy towards her situation and towards any type of critique of the culture in which she lives makes it quite different from the quests in American road movies. Like Laderman says, the cultural critique does not come straight from Mona's mouth, but as a result of watching the film and then thinking about it. It is in the act of watching that we can think about how Varda critiques French culture.