This February, an IC lecture explored a crisis of identity in the face of potentially devastating sickness.
Every month, International Cinema (IC) holds free showings for a selection of international films. These films explore various themes and display a wide array of cultures.
In February 2025, faculty members and alumni from the College of Humanities presented lectures about four films before their showings. Among them, alumna Susan Garver (French Studies ’12) discussed how the legendary French director Agnès Varda contrasts themes of beauty and death in her 1962 film Cléo from 5 to 7.
“This Barbie Has Cancer” by Susan Garver
If you were waiting to find out whether you were terminally ill, how would you pass the time?
In Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, pop singer Cléo Victoire finds herself confronting this question as she awaits the results of a biopsy telling her whether or not she has stomach cancer. As she wanders around Paris, waiting for a seven o’clock phone call with her results, Cléo tries to cope with the sudden specter of death hanging over her life. On February 19, 2025, alumna Susan Garver (French Studies ’12) presented on how the movie explores the idea of confronting a life-threatening sickness and creates a story that is deeply and broadly relatable in its examination of youth and mortality.
The theme of life and death in Cléo isn’t a subtle one; the movie opens with Cléo receiving a tarot reading from a fortune teller, who pulls both The Hanged Man and Death. While the fortune teller seeks to reassure Cléo that Death can also mean a transformation of one’s entire being, the encounter puts Cléo in a state of distress that persists for the rest of the movie. To bring herself peace, Cléo clings to the assurance of her beauty, saying, “As long as I am beautiful, I am alive.” Her mindset creates a contrast between beauty and death that calls back to the Renaissance trope of Death and the Maiden.
[The film asks], what does it do to you when you’re not just sick, but you feel like you can’t be who you are?
Interestingly enough, slasher movies use this same trope to create tension—and though Cléo isn’t a horror movie, the tension created in both is the same. Garver explained that this suspense happens because audiences tend to feel extra connected to young, innocent women. She said, “We want someone to survive in both because what would be the point if no one’s there to tell the tale?” Unlike in slasher movies, the threat Cléo faces isn’t external, but instead is a sickness that could steal her looks, health, livelihood as a pop singer, and even her identity. “This sickness could ruin her life,” Garver said. “Her beauty and her ability to perform is her entire persona, and without it . . . who is she?”
Questions like these were what drew Garver to the movie in the first place, since it mirrored things going on in her own life. When she first encountered the film, she was dealing with chronic illness and a host of other difficulties. “It felt like so many of the things me and my friends were going through,” she said. “What’s interesting is that we realize how real Cléo is. . . . [The film asks], what does it do to you when you’re not just sick, but you feel like you can’t be who you are? You’ve lost your mortal power. How do you deal with death, with the fear of death?”
Below is a selection of the other films shown in February.
My Brilliant Career (1979)
"Don’t you ever dream there’s more to life than this?”
Based on the 1901 novel of the same name, My Brilliant Career is an Australian film that tells the story of Sybylla Melvyn, a young, headstrong girl in 1897 with aspirations to become a writer. Frustrated first by her social status and then by a potential romance, Sybylla must decide what’s most important to her as she seeks to determine her own path. The film deals with themes of independence and self-discovery, showing that ultimately, the best future you can have is the one you choose for yourself.
Kitchen Stories (2003)
“For the sanctity of the study, never become friends.”
Director Bent Hamer’s oddball comedy Kitchen Stories takes inspiration from 1940s research into the efficiency habits of Swedish housewives in the kitchen, asking the equally critical follow-up question “What about the habits of Norwegian bachelors?” Scientist Folke Nilsson is assigned to study bachelor Isak Bjørvik’s habits from a ceiling-high chair in Bjørvik’s kitchen without ever talking to him or interfering with his daily lifestyle . . . with hilarious results, of course. The film explores the strength of the human drive to connect, showing how friendship can bloom in the unlikeliest of circumstances.
The Mole Agent (2020)
“I bought the newspaper and saw an ad that said, ‘Man needed between 80 and 90 years old.’ And I thought, am I crazy or what?”
This unusual documentary follows the story of Sergio Chamy, an elderly man hired for a job by the private investigator Rómulo Aitken. His task: to infiltrate an old folks’ home after one of Aitken’s clients asks him to find out if a nursing home is mistreating her elderly mother. Chamy sleuths for clues and befriends his fellow residents while he’s at it, giving a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to live in a nursing home. It’s a delightful, heartwarming piece that reminds us we’re never too old to care about each other.
To read more about previous films and lectures featured at the IC, click here.