☆☆☆
Faces Places is a comedy for intellectual highbrows, which makes it largely inaccessible to a lot of people who might otherwise enjoy it, but also makes it impossible to fully enjoy unless you're familiar with the shorthand way it talks about cinema and art history.
In large part, it's an adorable little Odd Couple story about two wildly different people who connect with each other over a shared love of art. There is a smaller part, which deals with some grand themes of memory, loss, death and life, and an even smaller -- but in the end crucial -- part about French cinema and the political ideologies of French New Wave director Agnes Varda, who co-directed this film.
That small-but-crucial part is the element of Faces Places that was least effective for me, and there were large swaths of this brief (88-minute) film that made my mind wander as Varda and her collaborator, a French photographer-artist named JR, mused on Varda's colorful history as one of the French filmmakers who revolutionized cinema a half-century ago.
But those bits -- and the film's assumption you will understand every reference in the movie -- are mostly worth sitting through to get to the film's twin beating hearts.
The first is the wonderfully playful relationship that 89-year-old Varda and 34-year-old JR have; they are joyful, cantankerous, funny and profound as they embark on a journey across France to fulfill an artistic vision of taking massive photographs of people and pasting them on buildings. Why? Because, Varda explains, it lets them meet people, and what is art if not connecting with others?
That's one of the most intriguing concepts in the film, which Varda and JR made together, and the connection the two (especially her) seem to have with the people they meet feels real and abiding; by their mere presence, they change the villages they visit.
As they traverse the countryside, though, it is clear that Varda -- despite her seemingly unstoppable energy -- is slowing down. She can't see very well, she can't climb stairs, and she spends more and more time thinking about the past.
So, the two of them, the old woman and the young man, get in their truck and wander, taking a road trip through some of the less desirable, less romantic locations in France, and they kind of riff off of each other, and that's pretty much all Faces Places is.
It's a sweet and tender look at art and aging, at the way we connect (or don't) with other people and why. It does dig too deep into its questions, and goes off on some long and rather opaque tangents, one about worker solidarity and one about the unchangeable nature of difficult people.
It's hard to know if they amount to much. Faces Places is a sweet and entertaining diversion, one that will mostly appeal to those who know contemporary art and appreciate French film history, or who want to get a warm-hearted glimpse at what France is like in places tourists never go.
Viewed January 14, 2018 -- Laemmle Monica
1650
In large part, it's an adorable little Odd Couple story about two wildly different people who connect with each other over a shared love of art. There is a smaller part, which deals with some grand themes of memory, loss, death and life, and an even smaller -- but in the end crucial -- part about French cinema and the political ideologies of French New Wave director Agnes Varda, who co-directed this film.
That small-but-crucial part is the element of Faces Places that was least effective for me, and there were large swaths of this brief (88-minute) film that made my mind wander as Varda and her collaborator, a French photographer-artist named JR, mused on Varda's colorful history as one of the French filmmakers who revolutionized cinema a half-century ago.
But those bits -- and the film's assumption you will understand every reference in the movie -- are mostly worth sitting through to get to the film's twin beating hearts.
The first is the wonderfully playful relationship that 89-year-old Varda and 34-year-old JR have; they are joyful, cantankerous, funny and profound as they embark on a journey across France to fulfill an artistic vision of taking massive photographs of people and pasting them on buildings. Why? Because, Varda explains, it lets them meet people, and what is art if not connecting with others?
That's one of the most intriguing concepts in the film, which Varda and JR made together, and the connection the two (especially her) seem to have with the people they meet feels real and abiding; by their mere presence, they change the villages they visit.
As they traverse the countryside, though, it is clear that Varda -- despite her seemingly unstoppable energy -- is slowing down. She can't see very well, she can't climb stairs, and she spends more and more time thinking about the past.
So, the two of them, the old woman and the young man, get in their truck and wander, taking a road trip through some of the less desirable, less romantic locations in France, and they kind of riff off of each other, and that's pretty much all Faces Places is.
It's a sweet and tender look at art and aging, at the way we connect (or don't) with other people and why. It does dig too deep into its questions, and goes off on some long and rather opaque tangents, one about worker solidarity and one about the unchangeable nature of difficult people.
It's hard to know if they amount to much. Faces Places is a sweet and entertaining diversion, one that will mostly appeal to those who know contemporary art and appreciate French film history, or who want to get a warm-hearted glimpse at what France is like in places tourists never go.
Viewed January 14, 2018 -- Laemmle Monica
1650
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