Visages, villages (2017)

Directed by: Agnès Varda, JR | 90 minutes | documentary

In his late eighties, but still as sprightly as anything, director and photographer Agnès Varda travels through France with street artist JR, a hip thirty-something, in search of inspiring people and locations for their film ‘Visages, villages’ (2017). An unlikely collaboration you would say given the age difference. The story of how they met, or rather how they didn’t meet, is humorously depicted in staged scenes that set the tone for the rest of the film.

‘Visages, villages’ is a registration of a road trip in which the artists, their projects and the stories of the people they meet are central. A little drama is not shunned. Everyone they meet is remarkably articulate, and eager to join Varda and JR’s party. For example, farmer Clemens van Dungeren from Chérence, who in a friendly and very effective way gives a small introspection of his inner world and modern farming life. From him we learn that a tractor is a moving computer that allows one man to cultivate 900 hectares of land. And goat herder Patricia Mercier from Goult tells us that goats’ horns are burned off to optimize the production process, and that she is firmly against this. The grounds of the abandoned and dilapidated village of Pirou-Plage are used for a neighborhood party. The people from the area are photographed and their portraits are pasted on the walls of the uninhabited houses. For a moment, the ghost town comes back to life, and Varda puts on a play to illustrate this in which a postman delivers a delivery to a ruin. It seems as if half of France has left for a picture with Varda and JR and to pay tribute to rural and industrial life.

And while JR is busy pasting huge photos of the people they meet on facades, Varda muses about the past, about the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, the photographers Guy Bourdin and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and about her husband and director. Jacques Demy. A genuine interest in the lives of other people, and the need to translate their stories into pictures, along with a touch of playful nostalgia, keep all these diverse subjects together, making ‘Visages, villages’ something that stands out. best described as an amusing and heartwarming film.