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Filmmaker Angès Varda and street artist JR do not co-write. They do not co-direct. In fact, both of them seem somehow confused as to how exactly they ended up creating a documentary together in the first place.
Their new film, Faces, Places (“Visages, Villages” in French) follows the unlikely friendship between these two aesthetic visionaries as they travel through rural France creating art from the people and places they come across. “We thought by letting them speak, express themselves, and then be big on walls, would be a gesture of empathy to people we didn’t know,” Varda explains.
One of the things that makes Varda and JR work so well together is the way they complement each other not just in art, but in life. Young vs. old, tech-savvy vs. traditional, the “boom boom boom” of a film production line vs. the slow, patient attention à l’ancienne. The two of them push each other’s boundaries artistically and personally, but they never forget to have fun while they’re doing it.
Find tickets at a theater near you for a little taste of the French countryside and a celebration of strangers coming together in the most unlikely of ways.
