“Varda en vadrouille/Agnès on the Road Again,” an Extended Review of Visages Villages by Agnès Varda & JR (2017)

Abstract

This article offers an extended review of Visages Villages, Agnès Varda’s latest film. In this travelogue which she co-directs with JR, a French photographer and street artist known for his gigantic installations, Varda explores the French landscape that she loves through her exchanges with locals. By focusing on fragments of the film that I consider both significant and consistent with ideas which are prevalent in the rest of Varda’s oeuvre, this text offers a range of critical tools to better understand this inventive travelogue. One can only appreciate the vivacious drive of this octogenarian director by establishing connections between specific sequences of Visages Villages and the notions of geography/space, memory, and sensual film.

Keywords:

• Agnès Varda
• space
• memory
• mortality
• connections
• materiality

Notes on contributor

Delphine Bénézet studied English and film studies in France, England, and Canada where she earned her Ph.D. at the University of Montreal. She has taught film studies and comparative literature at the University of Essex, King’s College, and Queen Mary University, and is now an independent scholar working at the London School of Economics. She is the author of The Cinema of Agnès Varda: Resistance and Eclecticism (2014). Her research interests include French and francophone cinema, sound studies, and phenomenology.

Notes

1 See Emmanuelle Jardonnet’s article, “De JR à Francis Lalanne, quand le recours au crowdfunding passe mal.” Le Monde. 18 May 2015. Web. http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2015/06/18/maladresse-indecence-quand-le-re cours-au-crowdfunding-par-des-stars-passe-mal_4657245_3246.html. Feb. 2018

2 See how for instance Alan Scherstul calls the film an “irresistible Art-Creation Buddy Comedy” in Village Voice from October 2017 (Scherstul).

3 To read more about this, see my interpretation of the concept of ‘collective enterprise’ in the films that Varda shot in Sète and California (Bénézet 42–48, 72–78).

4 Varda interestingly describes their meeting as a sort of professional love at first sight (“une sorte de coup de foudre professionnel”) (Grégoire) in an interview published here: https://www.rayonvertcinema.org/agnes-varda-jr-visages-villages/.

5 Varda, Agnès, dir. Daguerréotypes. Ciné-Tamaris, 1974.

6 Varda, Agnès, dir. Mur, Murs. Ciné-Tamaris, 1980.

7 Varda, Agnès, dir. Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse. Ciné-Tamaris, 2000.

8 In French, a water tower is literally translated water castle.

9 Varda, Agnès, dir. L’Opéra Mouffe. Ciné-Tamaris, 1958.

10 Varda started her career as the official photographer of the Théâtre National Populaire, an innovative theatre company lead by Jean Vilar.

11 Varda, Agnès, dir. Réponses de Femmes. Ciné-Tamaris, 1975.