Faces Places (film)

Faces Places (Visages Villages) is a 2017 French documentary film directed by Agnès Varda and JR. It follows the pair as they travel around rural France creating portraits of the people they meet. The film was screened out of competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the L'Œil d'or award, and released on 28 June 2017 in France, and on 6 October 2017 in the United States. At the 90th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Documentary Feature.

The film was Varda's second-to-last work, preceding her two episode 2019 documentary series Varda by Agnès.

Synopsis
Varda and JR, who is 55 years Varda's junior, visit villages, small towns, and factories throughout France to meet communities of people and create large portraits of them to plaster on walls and structures. Over the course of their travels, the two artists get to know each other and become friends.

Varda refers more than once to "Les fiancés du pont MacDonald", a short film she made in 1961 about a young man, played by Jean-Luc Godard, who sees the world through dark glasses. She notes the resemblance between Godard, who frequently even wore sunglasses inside, and JR, whose public image also includes wearing sunglasses. Eventually, Varda and JR travel to Switzerland so she can introduce him to Godard. When they arrive at Godard's house, however, he rudely refuses to see them, bringing Varda to tears. To soothe her, JR shows her his face unobscured, but, since she is losing her sight, we only see him blurred.

Critical reception
Faces Places received widespread acclaim from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 99% of 144 critics' reviews of the film are positive, with an average rating of 8.8/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Equal parts breezily charming and poignantly powerful, Faces Places is a unique cross-generational portrait of life in rural France from the great Agnès Varda." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 94 out of 100 based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Amy Taubin of Film Comment called the film an "unassuming masterpiece" that is "both personal and populist, a celebration of artisanal production (including cinema), worker solidarity, and the photographic arts in the face of mortality." Film critic Imma Merino wrote that it is "a road movie through rural France in which the protagonism is yielded to homes and anonymous women that the filmmaker turns into giants. It is also an X-ray of the way to understand life".

Awards and accolades
The film won the Grolsch People’s Choice Documentary Award at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, and the Most Popular International Documentary Award at the 2017 Vancouver International Film Festival. It also won the award for Best Non-Fiction Film at the 2017 New York Film Critics Circle Awards, and the award for Best Documentary Feature at the 33rd Independent Spirit Awards. Time magazine selected the film as one of the top ten films of 2017.

At the 90th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Documentary Feature. It was nominated for Best Documentary and Best Original Music at the 43rd César Awards.