Sans toit ni loi (1985)

English title: Vagabond
English translation of the French title: Without Roof or Law

The dead body of a young drifting woman is found in a ditch. The film then flashes back a few months and then follows her up until her death. She wanders aimlessly through the countryside taking odd jobs and sleeping in empty houses or in a camping tent. She meets with assorted characters, occasionally settling somewhere, only to depart after a short period.

To be frank, as I started watching this film it didn't look very promising, and even began to annoy me a little. To begin with, the notion of a young female drifter without any goal in life is very implausible, and the reasons for that are not very hard to discern. But I decided to suspend my disbelief. Perhaps the purpose of the movie was precisely that: to imagine an unusual character living an unusual life. And it actually got better, or, more accurately said, it felt better when I took that more broad-minded stance toward it. It is a very simply, almost crudely staged movie. I decided to overlook that too. All in all, one might say that its originality consists in not making the main character a victim, at least not in a traditional sense. She does not come across as a particularly endearing person either. She is nothing special, but her unique condition makes her the object of the projection of the people she encounters; she is like an empty vessel into which everyone pours their frustrations. The film may be seen as a parable of sorts, a parable without a discernible moral. The ending, though simply a return to the beginning, is oddly disturbing; the strange sequence that precedes it maybe the source of that emotional effect.

Rating: 55