No sex appeal from Mona...
As quoted from David Laderman’s book Driving Visions “Mona is ugly and disheveled; she has no car nor any impulse to drive, a truly disturbing homeless drifter.�
Vagabond embraces the cinematic techniques and narrative structure of a feminist counter-cinema film through its disruption of the male gaze and avoidance of phallocentric capture. As an audience, we are constantly looking at the other characters looking at Mona. We, like the others, are trying to figure out Mona and find ourselves much less interested in sexualizing her.
To avoid creating a male gaze, Varda is extremely careful in the treatment of Mona as a sexual being, both in her relationships with others and in her physical appearance. When the film opens Mona is bathing in the ocean and men are watching her from the road. The camera focuses on these men and their dialogue keeping Mona at a distance preventing her naked body from being seen. In a later scene Mona is raped by a mechanic and Varda prevents us from seeing Mona. All we see is her hand as she closes up her tent. Instead we are focused on the mechanic zipping up his pants and walking away. In another scene following her rape we see Mona get attacked by a man in the woods. The camera protects us from sexualizing Mona by panning away from her and the man toward the trees in front of them. Even though Mona’s relationships are important, Varda uses Mona’s physical appearance to fully disrupt the male gaze. From the clothes Mona wears to her looks the audience struggles to find any sexual desire for her. The lack of sex appeal for Mona is made most clear in the scene where Mona and the professor sit across from one another at a restaurant. The professor has manicured and painted finger nails, neat hair, makeup and jewelry. Mona has dirty nails, messed hair, and wears no makeup or jewelry. Even in death we see Mona’s face and clothes stained by grapes, and her hair in a greasy mess.
The phallocentric nature of the film is avoided by the role of the automobile and the ability of Mona to lead the action and be treated as an equal. The automobile, a popular phallocentric symbol, is not relied upon in this film. In the scenes where Mona is in an automobile it is being driven by a woman (either the professor or Yolande). Any action or travel in this film is initiated by Mona. During her travel from place to place she is treated as an equal. First, when she stops to stay with a farm family and we watch her sit across the table from the farmer having a conversation while the camera moves back and forth between the two. The second good example of equal treatment is when she works with Assoun who offers to split what he makes with her if she joins him trimming grape vines.
Using these techniques Varda is able to prevent the sexualizing of her main character and establish a counter-cinema film.