A delightfully small film about great big faces
Faces Places
(out of 4) Road trip documentary with filmmaker Agnès Varda and photographer JR. Directed by Agnès Varda and JR. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox. 89 minutes. STC Midway through this delightful, artful road trip by French New Wave master Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR, a curious railway worker asks what the point is of plastering a giant photo of human toes on a train.
“The point is the power of imagination,” Varda replies with a smile — although anyone who sees this lovely travelogue will require no explanation, only a large screen to better take it all in.
Varda, 88 at the time of filming, and JR, 33, make quite the amusing pair as they travel through the French countryside, visiting mostly small towns (and a couple of large cities) to create oversized photos of the people they meet.
Her hair punkishly split between red and white, Varda stands a good 18 inches shorter than JR, who resembles Varda’s old New Wave accomplice Jean-Luc Godard with his gangly form, fedora and permanent shades. JR’s droll wit, however, makes him more like another of Varda’s contemporaries: Jacques Tati and his doofus alter ego Monsieur Hulot.
Varda and JR hadn’t met until shortly before filming began, when they spontaneously decided to pool their talents for creating whimsical imagery.
They get on like an old squabbling couple as they roam through France, passing fields of lilac and sunflowers. JR drives a van resembling a giant Polaroid camera, which dispenses large-format photos from within, later to be attached as murals to walls, trains, water towers and other public objects.
Most people are delighted to become instant celebrities, like the old woman in a mining ghost town who sees old friends come alive again. But a shy young woman in another town, who coyly posed with a parasol for another giant, is dismayed to see her image become a selfie spot for tourists, being gawked at worldwide via Facebook and Instagram.
Faces Places also functions as a career summary for Varda, whose eyesight is fading. Clips from such landmark works as Cléo from 5 to 7 and The Gleaners and I are worked into the enterprise, as are examples of her photography. On a brief stop in Paris, Varda and JR also have merry fun recreating a classic Godard image: the run through the Louvre of Band of Outsiders.
The road trip turns melancholy, even heartbreaking, when they attempt to visit Godard at his home in Switzerland and find less than they’d hoped for.
JR saves the day by suggesting a poetic meaning to the incident, echoing a comment made by a passerby viewing one of their magnificent murals.
“It’s surprising,” the stranger says. “And art is meant to surprise us.”
What more of a point do you need than that?