Faces Places (2017)

The critic finds the film a singularly charming social document that captures Varda and JR's endearing odd-couple chemistry and their humanising art project. It highlights the tenderness in Varda's reflections on life, death, and connection amid the road-trip encounters.

Varda and JR's whimsical tour of the French countryside, pasting massive portraits of locals onto their environments, is magnificently moving, funny, life-affirming and altogether wonderful. The critic singles out the intergenerational chemistry and soul-stirring reminder of human connection through art.

The critic praises the joyful collaboration between Varda and JR as they photograph and monumentalize ordinary French people, highlighting themes of community, memory, and mortality in a breezy, generous film.

Varda, nearing 90, continues to make searching, compassionate and funny films, here collaborating with JR on a humanist road documentary that celebrates ordinary people through large-scale portraits. The film movingly pairs the artists while confronting aging, memory and friendship, ending on a note that blurs documentary and fiction.

The critic describes the film as an utterly charming road movie documentary full of puppy-dog energy and curiosity. It singles out the joyful celebration of friendship, art and life, while noting a lament for a disappearing France.

The critic praises the intuitive, collaborative road trip between Varda and JR as they connect with ordinary French people through large-scale portraits. It singles out the film's blend of collective joy, personal poignancy, and Varda's playful instinct for memory and improvisation.

The film is a lovely addition to Varda's personal documentaries about French life, following the director and JR on a road trip through rural and working-class communities where they engage locals and post large photographic portraits. McCarthy highlights the charming, unplanned encounters and the special spin through France's backwaters.

At 89, Varda proves she has everything left to discover, teaming with JR for meandering road trips that turn ordinary encounters into powerful public art. The film reveals itself as a complex, radical work through its democratic, conversational approach to people and places.

Varda, at 88, remains ageless, conjuring another enchanting personalized documentary with JR that renders ordinary rural French lives large through epic portraits. The slender premise yields a profound, playful political statement about valuing everyday people over celebrity and wealth.

Varda and JR form an empathetic team whose collaboration is provocative, poetic and poignant. The film blends whimsy with a sharp political edge while highlighting ordinary people's stories.

Varda and JR embark on a lovely, restorative road trip through French towns, plastering giant portraits on buildings and containers to celebrate overlooked people, especially women. Her fading eyesight and undimmed openness make the film an invigorating tribute to empathy and artistic collaboration.

The critic praises this beguiling essay/road movie for its warmth, playful spirit and the spectacular, moving giant portraits created by Varda and JR of ordinary French people. The collaboration between the veteran director and the young artist is singled out as unique and touching.

Varda and JR travel rural France creating heroic-scale portraits of ordinary workers, farmers and women, turning daily life into devotional images. The warm, celebratory film honors the heroism of everyday labor while becoming personal through Varda’s reflections on age and cinema history.

Varda and JR's road trip creates epic portraits of rural people that make viewers look and listen closely. The film is the most melancholy yet uplifting buddy movie of the year, with a moving climax involving Godard.

The critic calls it a delightful documentary that captures the odd-couple road trip and its focus on villagers and their stories. It singles out Varda's compassionate exploration of compassion, ageing, memories and art through the giant portraits.

The film doubles as Varda's artistic statement, a road movie and public-art project touring rural French villages to cover structures with giant likenesses of locals. It singles out the real sweetness in the intergenerational chemistry between Varda and JR and the deeply touching large-scale works.

Varda and JR tour the French countryside in a giant-camera truck, creating wall-sized portraits while visiting farms, coal towns and other spots, with oodles of charm and moments of beauty. The review notes it lacks the essayistic point-of-view of Varda's best documentaries.

The review calls the film a poignant snapshot of a vanishing France, noting the powerful emotional effect of the giant portraits on their subjects and an undertone of elegy beneath its charming surface. The chemistry between the age-distant collaborators is highlighted positively.

Varda and JR's road trip through France creates large-scale community portraits that blend accessibility with philosophical depth about home, visibility, and seeing the world differently. The film is warmly engaging and nostalgic without sentimentality, serving as a love letter to Varda's perspective.

Varda and JR's collaboration produces an endlessly charming documentary that looks forward and back with insight, blending whimsy, wisdom, and modern essay filmmaking. It highlights their complementary artistic sensibilities and intimate connections with people and places across France.

The film is an intriguing and playful artistic journey that shines a light on overlooked rural communities through Varda and JR's collaboration. It celebrates ordinary people and their stories while highlighting the duo's genuine connection and creative impact.

The critic finds the whimsical road-trip documentary rewarding and moving, praising how Varda and JR turn ordinary people into icons while also celebrating Varda herself as a colossus of cinema.