Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962): Waiting for Results

Agnès Varda follows a young Parisian singer, Florence "Cléo" Victoire, from five o'clock to half past six on the longest day of the year. She is waiting for a biopsy result that will tell her whether she has stomach cancer.

She visits a tarot reader, who talks about illness and change, and who cannot read her palm. Cléo takes that as confirmation. She tries on hats. She rehearses a song and walks out of it. She is petted and managed by everyone around her, and slowly stops performing for them.

In a park she meets Antoine, a soldier on his last day of leave before returning to the Algerian War. He persuades her to go and collect the result in person rather than wait for it to reach her.

At the hospital a doctor tells her, almost in passing, that she will be fine after two months of treatment. Cléo says her fear has gone.

The ending is discussed below.

Almost every cancer film starts after the diagnosis. This one stops before it, and that is why it is still the best film about the part most patients remember most vividly.

Cléo has no diagnosis. She has no treatment, no plan and nothing to do. She has an interval, and the film is honest that an interval is not empty. It fills with superstition, bargaining, magical thinking and dread, and it does so regardless of how sensible a person normally is.

Varda also gets the social experience right. Everyone around Cléo minimises. Her lover, her assistant and her collaborators all reassure her briskly and change the subject. Being managed like that is isolating, and it is why people in this position often stop mentioning it at all.

Medically the film claims almost nothing, so there is almost nothing to get wrong. That is what makes it usable.

Many patients call it scanxiety. It describes the dread that builds before a scan or a result, and it is close to universal.

It is not a failure of composure. Waiting for information you cannot influence is a specific psychological load, different from grief and different from fear of treatment. Your brain has nothing to work on, so it works on scenarios instead.

Two features make it worse. There is no task, so effort cannot help. And the end point is unknown, so you cannot pace yourself. That combination is what turns three days into something people describe as the hardest part of the whole illness.

Knowing that it is normal does not shorten it. It does stop people adding self-criticism to the pile, which is worth something.

None of this is heroic. It is the small set of things people who have been through it recommend.

• Ask at the time of the test when the result is expected, who will contact you, and how. Then you are waiting for a date rather than waiting indefinitely.
• Ask what happens if the result is unclear. Some biopsies need a second sample or extra laboratory tests, and knowing that in advance stops a delay reading as bad news.
• Ask whether the result will appear in an online portal before anyone has spoken to you, and decide in advance whether you want to look.
• Put company in the diary for the day you expect it, even if you say you would rather be alone.
• Set a limit on searching. Search results are not calibrated to your situation, your age or your test.
• Tell the team if the wait is genuinely unbearable. Many services have a nurse specialist who can chase a result, explain the delay, or arrange support.

This is the part of the modern experience Cléo never had to face, and it catches people out.

Results are often posted to a patient portal as soon as they are finalised. That can happen at ten at night, or on a Saturday, or before your consultant has read them. What you may see first is a pathology report written for another doctor: dense, full of terms with no plain-language gloss, and with no sentence anywhere that says what it means for you.

Decide in advance which you want. Some people would rather know immediately, whatever the wording. Others would rather wait for the phone call. Both are reasonable, and you can ask for your preference to be noted.

If you do look and cannot make sense of it, that is not a comprehension failure. Those reports are not written for patients. The number to ring is the one you were given at the biopsy.

Cléo's answer arrives in a single sentence from a passing doctor, and it is clean, kind and final.

Real results rarely land that way. Sometimes the pathology is inconclusive and another sample is needed. Sometimes it is cancer and the plan takes another week of scans to settle. Sometimes it is clearly not cancer, and the actual explanation still takes time to find.

The film's tidy relief is the fantasy version. What it gets right is everything up to that point.

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If you are waiting for a result right now, this is a strange film to choose and possibly the right one. It takes the interval seriously instead of skipping it.

The single most useful thing in it is Antoine's advice. Cléo stops waiting to be told and goes to find out. In 1962 that meant walking to a hospital. Today it usually means one phone call to ask when the result is due and who will explain it.

And if you are here because something has changed in your body and you have not yet had it looked at, the waiting starts later. See possible warning signs and screening.

This page discusses Cléo from 5 to 7 for education. It is not medical advice, and nothing here is a judgement of anyone's real medical care. Spotted an error? Please email corrections@cancerexplained.org.