Disturbing yet enthralling

Beautiful, moving film.

A Disappointing Continuation

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

At some moment there is a song "Changeling" by the Doors playing at the background: "Get loose! I live uptown, I live downtown, I live all around. I had money, and I had none but I never been so broke that I couldn't leave town" and I think this song plays a rather crucial role in Without Roof or Rule drama. There is a mental disorder called dromomania in psychiatric practice – an uncontrollable psychological urge to wander, people with this condition spontaneously depart from their routine, travel long distances and take up different identities and occupations. And it seems to be exactly the main heroine's case. "So slip the chain and I'm off again – you'll find me everywhere – I'm a rover" – Jethro Tull.

Mona the vagabond lives on the fringes of French society, in a life without meaning, purpose or direction.I watched this because of all the stellar reviews, but I'm afraid I must have missed something. The character of Mona has little or no personality while drifting through life being rude to people, getting high and contributing nothing to anyone's life. She's not interesting or exciting. She's just useless.I've seen and known enough people like that: there is no secret meaning to what they're doing. They are just lazy bums. I wouldn't want Mona anywhere near me, as she tends to steal anything that isn't nailed down and leave her friends in the lurch. Sure she's enigmatic - because there isn't anything to her. Lots of junkies, winos and bums I've seen are enigmatic; I wouldn't want to see a film about them either.Possibly there is something there that I totally missed. Otherwise I'm assuming that all the reviews are from people who assume anything done by a French female director is high art.

The last couple of weeks in the life of a dead vagabond woman is told in flashbacks. Like the vagabond, the film wanders aimlessly and rather pointlessly. Mona, the lazy, sullen, and drug-addicted title character, is not likable and Bonnaire does little to make her interesting. Although there is some pretentious dialog attempting to explain why Mona has chosen this miserable lifestyle, her motivations are never really clear. The episodic nature of the film, involving some random characters, becomes tiresome after a while, making it seem much longer than its running time. It is also hard to believe that an attractive young homeless woman would not draw more attention from men.

With an antagonizing protagonist who is as doomed as the plane trees in the film...this film could be seen as strictly nihilistic. I recently watched "SherryBaby" and strongly preferred this film which I watched a week prior, and yet I still find myself pondering Sandrine Bonnaire's portrayal of a woman who is stranded.Indeed "No one makes it alone" could better be the tag line here, and Bonnaire's Mona goes on an odyssey that is nothing short of harrowing. Also trading heroin chic for (self-imposed?) homeless bleak pushed us into less charted filmic waters. Choosing an unknown for the title role was also a good call I suspect. The film is now older than it's lead actress was at the time.So much of the film talks about how Mona stinks, perhaps smell-a-vision would have helped ;> Honestly her face is still too attractive, although wide and maybe manly in a way, that for me the sense of her scent didn't wash. That being said, her disaffection was on display so well, that you could see her as having a dirty soul. At nearly every chance of being likable she veers to the other direction, the one notable exception for me being her interaction with the "platonologne" (is that like octogenarian, don't know the French...the characters all had interesting descriptions in the credits)..Additionally, from the English subtitles and snatches of French, I sense the dialog (should I say dialogue) in this was quite cutting and clever in parts.While Mona lives without roof or law, while she may move without purpose or direction, she is more than a human tumbleweed. She does not live without leaving a trace...but the filmmaker keeps us intentionally distant from her, we are never allowed inside her mental tent. Thus our composite sketch of her is as complex and contradictory as the people she encounters. Not only does Mona live without control over her life, her death as well eludes her.Viewers may find it less easy to escape.Thurston Hunger 7/10