In Agnes Varda’s 1962 film Cléo from 5 to 7, a pop singer receives an omen of death in a fortune-teller’s tarot card reading. The film follows Cléo for the next two hours as she awaits the results of a biopsy that could reveal cancer. During this time, she moves through the world as someone who is both sick and healthy. Her assistant, lover, and fellow musicians—whose attention Cléo courts and deflects—dismiss her fear, call her a hypochondriac, and ridicule her for worrying about something they believe to be psychosomatic, echoing the common cultural perception of the era that cancer was a disease caused or exacerbated by anxiety and repression. To those around her, Cléo is not sick; and if she is, she herself is at fault, as the illness is a result of her having let unfavorable aspects of her personality flourish. The film is especially potent in its exploration of the cultural charges placed on illness, particularly that which says illness makes someone more or less beautiful. In an inner monologue, Cléo reassures herself: “Ugliness is a kind of death. As long as I’m beautiful, I’m more alive than others.” She tries on hats in a boutique and admires her reflection, even as pedestrians gaze at her through the shop window. What initially seems like vanity is revealed to be contemplation, as Cléo weighs what she believes has made her life up to this point valuable. The way she regards herself, in the face of the possibility of a life spent sick or of death, becomes the ultimate definer of how the world views her, too: At the beginning of the film, she steps into an intersection, confident that she will be able to stop traffic, which she does. Later, after her self-assurance is worn away from concern, she attempts to pass through a line of pedestrians, but no one moves; they don’t even notice her.