Connection and Creativity AGNÈS VARDA AND JR’S FACES PLACES
Faces Places (2017) is a testament to the value and significance of ordinary people. A collaboration between the venerable filmmaker, photographer and artist Agnès Varda and street artist/‘photograffeur’ JR, the film emerges as a playful road movie that mixes documentary, philosophy and memoir. The pair travel together through rural France to meet and photograph the eclectic collection of ordinary people they encounter and, in the process, foreground an artistic method based on empathy, conversation and collaboration. Varda and JR’s developing friendship forms the heart of the film: their visual representation within the narrative as an odd couple – one short and elderly, the other tall and comparatively young – ultimately highlights how similar they are in their shared capacity to connect with the humanity and lived reality of others. Amalgamating Varda’s lifelong openness to experience and JR’s fascination with identity and participatory culture, Faces Places is an optimistic work that has struck a chord with audiences who, according to Varda, appreciate its organising philosophy of connection.1
The film begins with a whimsical, even corny, animation that immediately communicates the unpretentious accessibility of Varda and JR, the ‘characters’ guiding us through the narrative. When the live-action Varda and JR replace their animated avatars, the playfulness continues – but, this time, with the purpose of introducing each of these figures to the audience and situating the project within their individual but connected practice as artists. In a brief monologue, JR references Varda’s most celebrated film, (1962), as well as the documentary she made in Los Angeles about the city’s remarkable murals, (1981). In turn, Varda describes JR’s public art
