Up against the wall
FACES PLACES, documentary, rated PG, in French with subtitles, Center for Contemporary Arts, 4 chiles
The French New Wave has long since broken and soaked into the sands of time. Truffaut is gone. So are Rohmer and Chabrol. And Resnais, Bazin, Rivette, and Demy.
Still standing tall, at 60 inches or so, is Jacques Demy’s widow, Agnès Varda, eighty-nine, one of the rare women of the bunch, whose Cleo From
5 to 7 (1961) is an enduring film of that movement. She began making films in the ’50s, and has more than 20 features and a similar number of shorts to her credit (six of each since 2000). Her awards shelf overflows with trophies, many coming in recent years in recognition of her long and remarkable career. In 2015, she became the first woman to be awarded an honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes. In November, she will receive an Honorary Award from the Motion Picture Academy.
This year finds her on the road again, pairing up with the young (thirtyfour) French photographer and installation artist JR to visit a series of out-of-the-way places in the French countryside in his photo studio van, taking pictures of the locals, printing them out in mural proportions, and pasting them on the side of barns and houses and anything else that comes to hand.
Varda and JR are new acquaintances, but they bond and bicker and crack wise like old friends. He’s tall and lanky, and never without his hat and sunglasses. She’s diminutive, with two-toned hair, failing eyes, and a ready wit. They’re both outgoing, and they relate easily to the people they come across and whose pictures they take. In an old mining village they meet Jeanine, the sole holdout still living in a row of condemned miners’ houses. They take her picture and paste it over the full facade of her house, a remarkable process in which the black-and-white image seems to become part of the textured brick surface. When she comes outside and sees it, Jeanine bursts into tears, and you may too. (“Jeanine, it’s not sad,” Varda says, hugging her. “We’re friends now.”)
Some of the mural photographic images JR and Varda leave behind them smack of social commentary, like the horned head of a goat that covers the side of a barn in implicit reproach to the dehorning practiced on factory-oriented farms, or the three women married to Le Havre dockworkers whose giant full-length likenesses rise up from the docks on packing crates stacked to the sky, demanding notice. Other images simply celebrate life, and the real lives of real people who otherwise would sink into the holes of oblivion.
The humanity and the joy of this movie make it impossible to watch without a smile on your face. There are moments of vulnerability and pathos as well. Near the end, the pair pays a visit to another survivor of the New Wave, another towering cinema legend. That trip provides its own emotional surprises.
As a coda to Varda’s life in film, or as the last movie before her next one, this is a gem. — Jonathan Richards