Visages, villages

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.

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.

Agnes Varda is probably the least pretentious and most accessible of the French New Wave directors. Unlike Jean-Luc Godard, who as an artist seems to have calcified recently into his worst characteristics -- pretension, abstraction and aloofness -- Varda seems only to grow more warm and charming with age. And her companion, the street artist JR, with his sheer youthful exuberance and eternal sunglasses, is a terrific counterbalance to her wisdom and reflection. Opposites attract!

JR runs through the Louvre, pushing Varda in a wheelchair, leaping over sofas, in a recreation of the scene in Band of Outsiders when the actors broke the record of running through the famous museum. Varda, while gazing over a herd of sheep, ruminates how the young active lambs on the outside of the circle are the ones leading the flock. And always, the faces. And the places. JR and Varda travel throughout rural France, pasting large photo printouts of people on walls. They talk, they tease each other, they meet interesting people. This movie is a love letter to creativity and art and people. A railroad worker asks Varda why she let JR paste her toes on the side of a train's petrol tank, and the first thing she says is, "For fun."

I was lucky to get to see this wonderful film on the big screeen - a treatment it justly deserves. JR is a master artist and Varda needs to introduction - she was a brilliant light in the world of cinema. I took great emotion in each of the locales and the art pieces they made together. This is a wonderful and lovely film which gets better on repeated viewings.

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.