Artists celebrate ‘Faces’ of France
The diminutive octogenarian filmmaker Agnes Varda teams up with the tall, lean, youthful French hipster, photographer and muralist JR in the delightful “Faces Places” (“Visages villages”).
The two travel the rural French countryside in search of “whatever comes next,” usually people and places to celebrate in gigantic photos pasted high up the sides of buildings, water tanks, trains and, in one case, a German World War II bunker resting eerily on its side on a Normandy beach.
In early scenes, Varda informs the Banksy-like JR that he reminds her of her old friend and fellow director Jean-Luc Godard (“Breathless,” “Alphaville”). In archival footage of Godard shot by Varda, we can see that the two aesthetes do bear some resemblance to one another.
Like “The Beaches of Agnes” (2008) and “The Gleaners & I” (2000), “Faces Places” combines new material and autobiographical information about Varda, who is a living connection to the French new wave of the 1960s and widow of the filmmaker Jacques Demy (“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” “Lola”) and whose collection of photographs is an important element in her and JR’s artistic journey.
The film, which was
screened out of competition at Cannes last year, where it won the Golden Eye award, is another charmer mixing past and present, old memories and new adventures. It transforms what might otherwise be forgotten — for example, a generation of French coal miners whose housing is about to be demolished — into giants of Gallic mythology.
To the beat of Matthieu Chedid’s playful guitar score, Varda and JR drive across the lavender and sunflower-covered valleys and Normandy coastline in a van equipped with a large format camera and printer, stopping in one scene to meet JR’s 100-year-old grandmother. Her gaze transforms the hipster into an instant gleeful toddler.
The two artists at the head of this film make a wonderful odd couple, even when they are fighting over something, and they help to make the at times undeniably elegiac “Faces Places” a joyful experience.