Faces Places

The director Agnès Varda and the photographer JR drive through the villages of France in a van fitted out as a printing machine. They photograph the people they meet, print the images at enormous scale and paste them on the wall of that person's house, factory or dock. The last woman refusing to leave a closed mining row, the wives of dockworkers, a goat farm. Fifty-five years separate the two of them and the film makes that part of the subject. Varda and JR directed it together. The ending is built on an appointment. The two drive to Switzerland to see Jean-Luc Godard, an old friend of Varda's, bringing the pastry he likes. Godard is not home. The only communication is an enigmatic note left on the window pane. The camera stays on Varda's face and the film goes on from there. It won the Golden Eye documentary prize at Cannes in 2017 and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, making Varda, at eighty-nine, the oldest person ever nominated in a competitive Oscar category. Who it is for: viewers who like playfulness in documentary and portraits of ordinary people. Who it is not for: anyone wanting structure. It moves like a travel record and leaves the work of connecting the episodes to you.