Although Agnes Varda is credited as co-director alongside French photographer JR, Faces Places frames her quite differently than her previous, self-referential documentaries (The Gleaners and I, Beaches of Agnes). Here—as she and JR travel to various French villages, making large-format photo portraits of the residents and pasting them on the sides of buildings—Varda is more of a curator, gathering the people and places for JR to involve in his craft. (The cinematography on Faces Places is credited to eight others.) Varda and JR make a good team, as they both share a genuine interest in people and their stories, a willingness to collaborate with their subjects, and the urge to use art to reframe the everyday. Among their most moving installations involves applying enlarged vintage photographs of miners to a row of crumbling brick rowhouses that used to house the workers but are now scheduled to be demolished. Only one woman still lives on the street, so they post her portrait across the facade of her home; when she sees it, she’s overcome with emotion. At one point in the documentary, Varda—89 at the time of its release—notes that JR is helping her fulfill her “greatest desire,” which is “to meet new faces, and photograph them, so they don’t fall down the hole in my memory.” With Faces Places, that gift is also ours.
