Visages, villages

89-year-old filmmaker Agnès Varda ("The Beaches of Agnès") said, "I have a nice relationship with time, because the past is here, you know? I've spent time, if I have something of my past, I'll just make it, nowadays, I make it now and here." Varda makes both past and present come alive in Faces Places (Visages Villages), 89-year-old filmmaker Agnès Varda ("The Beaches of Agnès") said, "I have a nice relationship with time, because the past is here, you know? I've spent time, if I have something of my past, I'll just make it, nowadays, I make it now and here." Varda makes both past and present come alive in Faces Places (Visages Villages), a life-affirming meditation on friendship, art, and mortality. Co-directed by JR ("Women are Heroes"), a 33-year-old hip French graffiti artist and photographer whom the director met in 2015, Varda and her companion make an unlikely couple. She stands out with her two-toned hair and diminutive stature and JR does a convincing Jean-Luc Godard ("Goodbye to Language") impersonation with his black fedora hat and dark sunglasses which Varda teases him about the entire film.

Both live life on the edges and do not live by the rules. "Chance has always been my best assistant," she says. Driving without any particular destination, they crisscross the French countryside in JR's van decorated to resemble a camera with a large lens on one of its sides. The travelers meet and take pictures of villagers, workers, and townspeople whom they immortalize with gigantic black and white portraits plastered on the sides of walls, old houses, container cargo, trains, and other objects. Playfully, Varda describes it like this, "We ended up with huge images of them after I made them express themselves. So it's a real documentary because we are careful about what they are, what they want to say. But also, we play our game, as being artists, making strange images or enjoying that people we meet becomes actors of our dreams."

The people they meet are former miners, waitresses, plant safety workers, truck drivers, and dockworkers and their wives in Le Havre. By himself on his 2,000 acre farm, a man laments the passing of the social aspects of farming, recalling how it was when three or four workers were always there for companionship. In other vignettes, a man and his son are responsible for ringing the church bell in a small village and farmers enjoy hand-milking horned goats, regretting that others cut off the goats' horns and do their milking with machines.Varda and JR also travel to an abandoned village which is suddenly filled with arriving well-wishers. They go to the Brittany seaside where she remembers the photographs she took of a young friend and fellow photographer during the mid-1950s, pasting an image of him reclining against a beach hut on a German bunker and telling JR how peaceful he looks resting there.

The slow pace of travel allows Agnès to confront other memories from her past, including a visit to a small cemetery where photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck are buried. After visiting JRs 100-year-old grandmother, JR asks her if she is afraid of dying. Varda answers in the negative. "That'll be that," she says." Reflecting on her relationship with the great director Jean-Luc-Godard, she recalls the time she spent with him, his then wife Anna Karina, and Varda's late husband, director Jacques Demy ("The Umbrellas of Cherbourg"). Agnès and her friend then travel to Switzerland to meet with Godard, bringing the director a gift of his favorite pastry but he is not home. Unfortunately, their only communication is an enigmatic message left on his window pane. In her only sense of irritation in the film, Varda uncharacteristically expresses deep feelings of hurt.

Faces Places is a quiet celebration of what is most important in life, simple pleasures of companionship and collaboration, of art made real and accessible, and of the divine in the commonplace. Varda said it best, "I know that the seaside represents the whole world", she remarked, "the sky, the ocean, and the earth, the sand. And it's like expressing where is the world. It's about a calm sea, a calm ocean, just a very, very discreet wave ending on the sand. And that's a landscape that touches me a lot. But I know that also people feel that, too." It is hard not to be touched by her presence.

I can't say that I completely agree with the level of acclaim this film has gotten, but for the most part, it remains the type of documentary film I love- very observational, very experimental, and free-flowing in its expression of art, love, and other positive emotions. The film is edited very well, and although I didn't really connect with every single piece of story told on screen, I got to enjoy the film as a whole and everything it amounted to. For an acquired taste, but definitely recommended.

"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.

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.

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.