Augenblicke: Gesichter einer Reise

Time seems to be moving faster with every passing decade, with a younger generation looming around the corner to put a fresh perspective on life, art and politics. Visages Villages introduces the gap between the old and the new, as director Agnes Varda and photographer J.R. journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship along the way.

J.R. and Agnes steal the show with their engaging philosophical chats and heartwarming intergenerational chemistry, no writer could've written a script like this. As we follow them on their travels from town to town, a deeper connection is developed not just between the two artists but between the townspeople they leave a mark on, literally. Both retrospective and introspective, Visages Villages challenges the viewer to bridge the generational gap with respect and gratitude but also to shape what has already come, to better what is to be. This thoroughly sweet watch will leave you with a gigantic smile on your face, and is likely to remain as indelible as the art work that is displayed.

Prolific and delightful Agnès Varda teams up with the celebrated photographer J.R. on a road trip through rural France. JR, well known for his photography murals, this time mainly focuses on the images of rural French working class, but the conversations between the two artists, touch on other themes that are equally interesting to follow.

Faces Places is one of those disarmingly charming films that are hard not to like, but its main theme, maybe too easy to digest, can make you peckish for a bit more challenge by the time the film is over.

"Visages villages" (the English title is "Faces Places") is the last big screen film directed in 2017 by Agnès Varda in collaboration with photographer and mural artist JR. Until her death in 2019, she would make another TV movie dedicated to her own work and career. Maybe it was planned, maybe it wasn't, but the final two films form a duet. At the age of 89, "Visages villages" is an artistic end to her career as a director, while "Varda par Agnès" is the documentary finale, in which the director comments on her path in life and cinema. I dislike when movies are called "testaments". I guess Agnès Varda didn't like that label either. "Visages villages" is a beautiful film, a documentary that talks about France, its places and its people, but more than anything about the two filmmakers, one of whom is a little old lady, with failing eyesight and in need sometimes for a cane to walk, her hair dyed a little funny but sure like no other on the face of the planet, but certainly a lady who loved life, art and people and was determined to live intensely and create until her last breath. And so it was.

The film is a road movie with art and about art. JR invites Agnès Varda to a trip through the villages of France using his truck transformed into a photo studio and the production shop of huge posters based on the photos taken by the two. We are in the age of smartphones, but they still use the traditional Leika cameras. The posters are then glued to buildings, ruins, industrial structures, rocks, trains or trucks. Molded on the shapes of objects they begin a new double life - as structures or utility machines and as works of art. This original creative style practiced by JR meets the art of framing moving images whose master was Agnès Varda. The artistic effect is twofold. The black and white of the photos becomes an element in the color palette of Varda's images, who films with passion in open horizons reminiscent of 'Vagabond', one of her most beautiful films. The photographed characters enlarged at bigger-than-life sizes become giant witnesses of their own lives.

"Visages villages" is a special film in Agnès Varda's filmography, but also a continuation of some of the stylistic and social themes of her films, as well as of some biographical moments. The subjects photographed are, as in many of the previous films, people from 'Deep France' - a waitress at a bar, workers in the two shifts of a chemical plant, the last inhabitants of an abandoned mining settlement, a hornless goat breeder and a militant against cutting the horns of goats, the wives of unionized workers in the harbor of Le Havre. Some of the people and artists whose trajectories intersected with Agnes's life appear - in the image or in memory -: the photo of an old friend from his early youth will be pasted on a German bunker collapsed on a beach in Normandy, the two will visit the house of writer Nathalie Sarraute and the graves of photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and his wife, and will set an appointment with Jean-Luc Godard. Eventually, Agnes herself and JR, her traveling and creative companion, become characters. We witness the developing friendship between them, their dialogues about art and the people who create it, about age and about death. "Visages villages" is a beautiful documentary and more than that. I think at the end of the filming JR was a little in love with Agnes. We too.

I LOVED the ceaseless pulse of creativity beating through this film. I LOVED the profound yet very slightly testy at times connection that both had with one another. I LOVED the people they touched and places they coloured. I LOVED almost the most the tribute paid to Jean-Luc Godard in the recreation of the famous 'race though the Louvre' scene from Bande à part. But I LOVED most of all one last opportunity to bear witness to Agnès Varda's indomitable spirit, which in turn left me feeling her great loss all over again. May she continue to rest in peace, and may JR remain popping up in his portable photo booth eternally, putting artistic joy in people's lives.

"Lyrical" best expresses with poetic simplicity the greatness of Faces Places, a documentary from French director Agnes Varda and street photographer, graffiti artist, JR. Together they create a song like film that immortalizes the French countryside and the people who work there.

Cruising in their van tricked out to look like a camera, they converse with and capture in photos goatherds, farmers, coal miners, factory workers, and cheese makers. By engaging their subjects with a sincere interest in what they do (Varda comes back a second time to connect with a lady whose principled tending of goats (not burning off young horns) appeals to the still formidable, principled director.

Varda and JR's blowing up the portraits to put on the sides of buildings, hills, ant trains not only ingratiates the artists with the subjects, but also figuratively comments on the director and photographer's ability to magnify the beauty of human nature. All photographers should hope for that impact.

A recurring motif about JR's unwillingness to remove his sunglasses (I identify) reminds Varda of her New-Wave friend, Godard, leading them to attempt to visit the famed director at the end of the film. Regardless of her success in connecting, Godard serves a touchstone for the genius of Varda and friends in the '60's just as JR helps make her just as relevant today at 88.

She's a remarkable grand dame, and although some have called her work "thrift-shop cinema," she and partner JR are savvy enough to win the 2017 Golden Eye for a documentary at Cannes. Best expressing her optimism and realism, she says about her death, "I'm looking forward to it. Because that'll be that." "That" is a body of work, the present doc included, that spans a half century of sublime cinema with immortality on its mind.