The definition of "vagabond" is some who wanders from place to place without any settled home, leading an unsettled or carefree life, so when I found that out I was intrigued to see what this French film featured in the 1001 Movies You See Before You Die book would offer, from director Agnès Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7, The Gleaners & I). Basically it is the winter in the south of France, and the body of dead woman, frozen to death, is found in a ditch, her identity is unknown, but people in the community recognise her from numerous encounters but never really finding out who she was. Through flashbacks we see how the dead woman wound up in the village and surrounding areas, beginning when the woman, Mona Bergeron (Sandrine Bonnaire), was walking along the road trying to hitch a ride and hide from the police, and in her journey she meets the numerous people who later recognised her. These people include fellow vagabonds like her, a Tunisian vineyard worker, a family of goat farmers, a professor researching trees and a maid who envies her because of her beauty and a way for men, and a few of these male encounters she seduces either for gain or pleasure. Mona explains to one her short term companions that she did originally have a real life, working in a post office in Paris with a good lifestyle, but she became unsettled and wanted to get away from the world of responsibility and care for herself wandering the country free. Obviously there are consequences to this carefree, unplanned and unallocated life choice, and over time she slowly becomes very ill, most likely due to bad treatment by some people and lack of good food, and this inevitably leads to where we found her at the beginning, falling into the ditch, miserable and freezing, and eventually giving up and dying. Also starring Macha Méril as Madame Landier, Yolande Moreau as Yolande, Stéphane Freiss as Jean-Pierre, Marthe Jarnias as Aunt Lydie and Joël Fosse as Paulo. The performance by Bonnaire as the mysterious stranger who encounters many people without telling much about herself and disappearing again is interesting, you are not sure whether to empathise or sympathise with her in whatever life she has, it is a simple enough story about someone living off the grid, it doesn't have any real plot as such, maybe why it got a little confusing sometimes, but it is a watchable mystery drama. Good!