French film legend Agnès Varda teams up with photographer JR to tool around rural France, creating art as community project that captivates everyone they encounter—and us, too. JR’s medium of oversized portraits, spit out on the fly from his mobile photo booth, becomes a way for them to celebrate ordinary people as they paste enormous murals of a farmer on his barn, a waitress on a village wall her cafe overlooks, even Varda’s own eyes on a train. “Chance has always been my best assistant,” she tells JR, and this is a fun and often laugh-out-loud funny expression of how the filmmaker approaches not only creativity, but life itself—as an active joy that finds poetry in the hearts of everyone and canvases for expression everywhere. Varda and JR codirected this crowdfunded documentary—more community involvement—and it is an absolutely wonderful ode to seeing the world with truly open eyes. At almost 90, Varda remains a force of nature whose creative spirit seems to get enlarged just as JR’s giant photos do by their adventure. May we all be so happily engaged by life and art.
By
MaryAnn Johanson