We can't help but think of life in the context of both our past and potential future but really it can only be experienced as a constantly unfolding present. Varda beautifully depicts this using a potent combination of real-time vérité filmmaking of the people and objects moving in and out of Cleo's orbit (or frame) around Paris as she awaits possible cancer results and bursts of subjective lyricism in both the way the images are composed/cut to reflect Cleo's internal experience of her external surroundings and the occasional sequence of ephemeral musicality (like being momentarily swept up in the performance of a song that makes her cry or having us watch an entire silent short film with her that makes her laugh) that allow her to cope with these sudden feelings of existentialism and mortality. Together these two forms go back and forth painting a series of mundanities that eventually accumulate and make up a living, breathing person and we live briefly with her as if these were her last 90 minutes; those minutes filled with love, despair, humor, vanity, creativity, regret, hope and most of all a deep appreciation of cats.