Hi everyone!
It’s official! We’re back from Spring Break! The podcast got so much love while we were away resting, relaxing, and raiding absolutely everything from multiple tombs in South America. At least I was. Well, technically, it was Lara Croft. Anyway, if you’re subscribed out there, let us know by commenting on today’s post with #WelcomeBackOMP, and who knows, maybe you’ll get a shout out on an upcoming episode!
As we work on ramping up with our usual team of reviewers, I’ll be filling the next two weeks with movies I had the pleasure of watching during the break. A nice mix of old and new films. Andrew Campbell will be back on Friday with his regular Fantastic Fest reviews. And the rest will be along sooner than you think.
For today’s review, however, we’re going with a review from last year for a film by JR and the late Angés Varda. Varda passed away on March 29thof this year, leaving a huge gap in the French film and art scene. Her filmography includes over 54 directing credits, with her first film, “La Pointe Courte” (1955), which helped usher in the French New Wave scene.
“Faces Places” still has a 99% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 94 Must See rating at Metacritic. You can catch the documentary streaming on Netflix and Kanopy, and it’s available for purchase at major digital outlets. If you’re looking for a documentary that puts a smile on your face, this is it.
Rest in peace, Agnés Varda.
Thanks for all your incredible work!
/////
Today’s movie is “Faces Places” (2017), the 2017 Oscar-nominated documentary from JR and Agnés Varda. The documentary was filmed while JR and Agnés Varda traveled across rural France in a box truck taking photographs of the people they meet, and form an unlikely friendship in the process, delving into their own stories and other stories on a variety of topics.
A little background for folks not familiar with either JR or Agnés Varda. Varda has been making art for almost her entire life, best known for her film work in the French New Wave movement, but also for installations and photography. JR is a pseudonym for one of France’s most notorious street artists, and has been involved in a number of installations and projects, both licensed and unlicensed, eventually winning the TED Prize for 2010 and starting the Inside Out Project, which uses mobile photobooths hidden in trucks to take and print black and white portraits.
The artworld can be a fickle place, sometimes overtly dominated by the egos of artists and buyers alike, wrestling with difficult questions about what is and is not art, often decided with checkbooks and popular opinion more often than any serious reasoning. Which makes “Faces Places” so refreshing in its playfulness and its lack of ego. Varda and JR keep a very loose structure to their collaboration, seeing where their collective vision takes them, and appreciating each other’s work and perspective, even as they playfully criticize each other. And the people they encounter in their journeys all feel genuine, never playing to a camera, which is important to making this film work.
Most documentaries nowadays tackle serious and/or tragic stories, as could be seen in this past year’s Oscar slate. Police brutality, Russian doping, financial scandals, and the Syrian civil war are all important topics, but all end up being downers in the end. “Faces Places”, by contrast, is incredibly positive despite some topics about old age, engaging people to participate in its creation rather than exclusively appreciating the final product. It’s still important that we cover the other topics, and all four documentaries did so incredibly, but we also need stories that lift the heart as well, and this film does just that.
“Faces Places” (2017) is a whimsical documentary by Varda and JR, a collaboration that creates a symbolic bridge between French New Wave and contemporary street art. Fun concepts are born from their work, bringing the power of art to everyday life, and enhancing the latent power found in smaller communities. Viewers who are looking for a positive documentary that warms the heart rather than shocks the conscience need look no further.
