Watches
August 08, 2020
Once one of the prime front-runners of the Nouvelle Vague, Varda ended her career making documentaries. I haven't seen many of her films yet, but based on this one and Cleo from 5 to 7, I think I like her narrative films a lot better. I found this to be quite self-indulging, pretentious and dull.
Varda teams up with JR, a younger artist who blows up photographs and plasters them against walls. The both of them travel through France in the hope that they can be inspired by random people they meet and to create art based on their stories. That's pretty much all there is to it.
Too many moments seem (and no doubt are) scripted and inauthentic, the relationship between Varda and JR feels forced and the resulting art from their travels is bland. In the end I didn't care for these people, didn't care for the people they met and didn't care for their creative process nor output. But they sure seemed to love the camera.