Varda brings us glamorous French New Wave in a production filmed almost in perfect real time. It is wonderful to traverse the streets of Paris with Cléo and difficult not to get wrapped up in the bustling and elegant Parisian miss-en-scène which draws us in. An observant Cléo (Corinne Marchand) awaits the results of her cancer tests. All the meanwhile she is prim and pretty, clearly painfully aware of her self-image but gradually comes to accept that perhaps there is something dangerous lurking beneath her pale, powdered skin that she cannot ignore forever. The friendship she makes at the end with soldier Antoine (Antoine Bourseiller) is perhaps a little tepid but wonderfully innocent and childlike and for this reason genuine and heart-warming compared with her cold and curt lover (José Luis de Vilallonga) who appears and quickly disappears in the earlier stages of the film. What a refreshing finish also.