From Below Series – Episode 19: JE N’AI PAS CHOISI LE TEMPS

New message for the neon sign, “J’ai pas choisi le temps” (“I didn’t choose the weather”) is a line from Agnès Varda’s film Vagabond (Sans toit ni loi). It captures a moment of friction between the protagonist’s fierce independence and the world around her.

Christian Robert-Tissot’s appropriation takes us back to Agnès Varda’s 1985 film, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The director’s camera follows the final weeks of wandering of a young drifter named Mona, brilliantly played by Sandrine Bonnaire, who won a César for her performance.

Living from one day to the next, the young woman moves through the world unattached, passing through landscapes and encounters as though nothing could truly hold her back. When a shepherd asks her why she keeps moving despite the cold, she replies tersely: “I didn’t choose the weather.” These words refer not only to the weather conditions, but also to the historical and social context from which Mona is trying to escape.

The line thus reveals the limits of the dream of absolute autonomy. Her desire for total emancipation, expressed through her rejection of conventions and of any form of integration, comes up against an unavoidable reality: human beings have no control over the circumstances of their existence or over the world into which they are born. Behind her refusal to come to terms with what she has been given, a form of fatalism therefore emerges. Mona faces each moment as it comes, ultimately accepting disappearance as the ultimate price of her freedom.

Through Agnès Varda’s lens, Mona is neither a victim nor a romantic heroine. The director presents her in all her complexity, by turns endearing, brutal, selfish, and vulnerable. Fictional testimonies about the young woman further multiply the perspectives on her, while Joanna Bruzdowicz’s original score accompanies this solitary journey and heightens its mystery.

Dans l’objectif d’Agnès Varda, Mona n’est ni une victime ni une héroïne romantique. La réalisatrice nous montre le personnage dans toute sa complexité, tour à tour attachante, brutale, égoïste ou vulnérable. Des témoignages fictifs sur la jeune femme viennent également multiplier les regards, tandis que la musique originale de Joanna Bruzdowicz accompagne cette marche solitaire et en souligne le mystère.

Retrouvez la série complète Contre-Plongée de Christian Robert-Tissot, lancée en décembre 2020. Le message de l’enseigne se renouvelle tous les trois mois jusqu’à l’ouverture officielle du Plaza Centre Cinéma.

Crédit photo: Roman Lusser