Movie Review/Summary: Faces Places

     

Faces Places is film documentary based on following the adventures of two people. One is named Agnes Varda, a well-known Belgian film maker who was close to 90 years old. The other is a French street artist and photographer that goes by the name JR, who is in his 30s. Despite the large age gap between the two, this duo goes on to make quite a touching documentary.

The documentary largely focuses on the people that JR and Agnes encounter during their travels across France. The pair traveled in a small van shaped like a camera, which is also coincidentally equipped with photographing equipment that aids alongside the projects they work on. They stop by and visit several villages and towns in France, photographing the locals and applying their faces to a mural in some unique way, shape, or form that grabs the attention of people walking nearby, usually on a landmark that can’t be missed.

One such example of their works is when they approached a village and asked everyone to hold a piece of bread in front of their face, as if they were biting it. JR and Agnes had photographed nearly 50 different villagers holding the bread before plastering the faces onto a long wall strip. They had aligned each picture in a way that made the bread seem to be long while also having everyone trying to take a bit of it.

Another example of their works is when they approached an old lady that lived in one of the old miner homes. They had learned that the homes were soon to be demolished but was being held back due to the old lady not moving out. Her main reason was that she had to many memories attached to her home. After that, JR and Agnes had conjured up an idea for their mural. They went around asking the locals if they had any pictures of their relatives who were miners. After gathering a few sample photos, they printed out large versions of these miners and plastered them all over the abandoned miner homes. For the old lady’s home specifically, they put an enlarged portrait of her face, which brought tears to her eyes.

            Although they went around creating murals that drew plenty of positive attention, there were times the photo subjects were not happy with the result. Such an example would be that one lady holding an umbrella whose portrait on the side of a building is now considered to be globally famous. She personally felt weird or uncomfortable seeing people taking pictures of her on the mural. Another example would be the power plant workers, some of which were disgruntled because they were cut off from the mural or were not included due to having a different shift than the ones present at the time.

            The most striking example of photography work to me was when JR and Agnes had the idea to paint a mural of one of Agnes’s old friends on a collapsed German bunker at Normandy. JR had asked Agnes to find the best representation of her friend from old photos. After dismissing a few and finally finding one to settle on, they went onto plastering the mural. They specifically chose to work during low tide so they would have to finish the work before it was ruined. JR knew the mural wouldn’t last for long going into this project, however I still found it shocking that the sea had erased their mural within only one night.

            JR and Agnes had also done other various works such as the women workers at the shipyard, fish on the water tower, and people’s faces on abandoned ruins. The one thing I learned from Agnes at the end was she had an eye disease that progressively got worse and distorts her vision. JR making murals of her eyes and feet on train cars was one of those last send offs that sort of seal the deal on how much they care and interact with each other. All in all, this was a good film that I highly recommend watching. It captures varying levels of human nature throughout this film that is otherwise ignored in everyday life.