Agnès Var­da: ​‘I’ve always enjoyed shar­ing peo­ple with audiences’

Pic­ture the scene: a hotel in Paris with jour­nal­ists form­ing a small row in front of a glass table, which itself sits in front of an over­sized sofa. There are young peo­ple with asym­met­ric hair­cuts stood in the door press­ing on an ear­piece and speak­ing into a micro­phone. They look like the Dal­ston FBI. There is a fris­son of pan­ic the air. It seems that their star attrac­tion has gone miss­ing. Maybe she took a wrong turn down one of the many snaking cor­ri­dors in this maze-like hotel? Or maybe, more like­ly, she just decid­ed to sack off her sched­ule and go her own way? Even­tu­al­ly, Agnès Var­da, 89 at the time of writ­ing, enters the room – she pos­sess­es the air of an eccen­tric roy­al fig­ure­head from a make-believe country.

She jokes about how she’s nev­er been com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful as a film­mak­er, but if this is true, it’s because her films are cheer­i­ly non­con­formist – the world has yet to catch up to her. Glanc­ing back across her spec­tac­u­lar career, high­lights include her path find­ing debut, La Pointe Courte, her bit­ter­ly iron­ic take on adul­tery, Le Bon­heur, the delight­ful doc­u­men­tary por­trait of her own street, Daguerréotypes, Venice Gold­en Lion win­ner Vagabond and her heart­break­ing, ram­shackle ode to France’s work­ing class­es, The Glean­ers and I. Her new film, Faces Places, sits cosi­ly with­in her per­son­al canon of greats, a tour around France in the com­pa­ny of con­cep­tu­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er JR to explore the rela­tion­ship between art and land­scape. What fol­lows is an unprompt­ed mono­logue deliv­ered by Var­da upon enter­ing the room.

“I love to speak about cin­e­ma. I’m not sell­ing any­thing. I guess you want me to talk about about Faces Places? I can speak about oth­er things, you know. I hate to talk with­out JR, because we did the film togeth­er hand-in-hand. We did the pro­mo­tion, we did the fes­ti­vals, we did every­thing. When we met we had the same desires and the same feel­ings. We want­ed to meet peo­ple who have no pow­er. Trust, luck and chance brought us new things, new peo­ple, dif­fer­ent people.

“We had a mag­i­cal truck. I fell in love with that truck. The lit­tle pho­to comes out the side. Peo­ple love it. They paste them on the wall and they feel like there is sud­den­ly a com­mu­ni­ty. Show­ing images is a way of shar­ing. In some vil­lages peo­ple say, ​‘Some­times we don’t get along, but putting our images togeth­er makes it bet­ter.’ We had in mind to go to dif­fer­ent places in France. Near the sea, in the mid­dle, in the south, in the north. We went to the north and we want­ed to meet peo­ple who lived in hous­es that were built for the local min­ers. There are no longer mines so they should leave the hous­es, but we were told that some women decid­ed to stay.

“Chance brought us to a woman called Jea­nine. We got along, and it was so inter­est­ing. She told us how sad she was at the pass­ing of her father. It became some­thing very warm, and when JR put her face on the house, she was so touched. If you have seen the film, you love Jea­nine. That’s what we want­ed. We want­ed the audi­ence to love the peo­ple we met and share some­thing with them. When we played the film in her vil­lage she said it made the mem­o­ry stronger. We built some­thing every­where we went.

“We learned also about the agri­cul­ture of today, the way farm­ing is so dif­fer­ent from how it once was. I couldn’t believe that a man alone can cov­er hectares with his machine and spend all day speak­ing with his com­put­er. We did soci­o­log­i­cal work, but with a smile and a sense of joy. We didn’t want to be seri­ous and qui­et. We shot one week per month over 18 months because I can­not do more than a week. We ran up and down the coun­try, stand­ing all the time. I’m strong, but not that strong. My daugh­ter Ros­alie – won­der­ful Ros­alie! – used to be a cos­tume design­er but in the last five years she has begun to work for the com­pa­ny. I used to do every­thing, includ­ing pro­duc­ing, but she pro­duced this film. She nev­er said, ​‘Hur­ry up’ but she always said, ​‘Do your thing’.

“The edit­ing took quite a long time. For me the film takes its real shape in the edit­ing, which I’ve always done. We put Jea­nine at the begin­ning, so we have a real meet­ing with big emo­tions. Anoth­er exam­ple: JR had found one of the big block hous­es that had fall­en from the cliff, and he want­ed me to see it. I said, ​‘Okay, okay, I have already seen that, I have seen many of them’. Then he gave me the name of the place, the beach, and I’d been there in 1954, tak­ing pic­tures with a friend of mine, who became the famous pho­tog­ra­ph­er Guy Bour­din. So, we took the pic­tures we had made and went to see the house where he was liv­ing with his grand­moth­er. Using the imag­i­na­tion, that pho­to became a lit­tle bed for a child and became a grave for my friend. With imag­i­na­tion, our feel­ings become some­thing beau­ti­ful. We knew that the tide would take it away, so we were work­ing with the desire to build some­thing that we knew wouldn’t last. It was a beau­ti­ful grave for my friend Guy. His son was very impressed.

“In all the places we went, we met peo­ple. One day I said, ​‘We should have dessert, where should we go?’ My assis­tant starts to look and says, ​‘I’ve found an aban­doned vil­lage.’ I didn’t know about it, so we dis­cov­ered that – a vil­lage that had been half built and aban­doned. We sent a cast­ing direc­tor a week before and I said, ​‘Try to find peo­ple in that vil­lage and bring them on Sat­ur­day.’ So we invit­ed them for a pic­nic, and they came. By mak­ing these images it was like a revival. We played a game with them. We had peo­ple agree to play roles. It was not a real fam­i­ly but we built a fam­i­ly from the peo­ple. We had a din­ner with them and the grand­fa­ther would fall asleep read­ing his news­pa­per. It was like a doc­u­men­tary-fic­tion thing. And then we left.

“The vil­lage has been destroyed after being like this for 20 years. Now they will build con­do­mini­ums there, or some­thing. We felt we were real­ly con­nect­ed to the life of that place, the dis­ap­peared life, the revival, and then it’s all gone. The mail­man was so nice, he said, ​‘Life has changed, you used to speak to the peo­ple and bring them their bread.’ All these lit­tle obser­va­tions. Then the wait­ress who posed for us, she said, ​‘I didn’t know the art­work would be that big, they give me com­pli­ments but I’m shy.’

“Every­one who came gave her com­pli­ments. Her chil­dren said she was beau­ti­ful. It was like get­ting a piece of life every­where, we want­ed to take pic­tures and make por­traits. It took us to the fac­to­ry, and mak­ing jokes with them was like par­tic­i­pat­ing in their work. The fac­to­ry work­ers said they had two days of fun, because we put fish­es in the water tank, decid­ing they should swim in there. They saw we were a lit­tle crazy, but they enjoyed it – they helped us. It was allow­ing us to bring our imag­i­na­tion into the seri­ous world of work. We were danc­ing with their life, propos­ing images, propos­ing a time of sharing.

“That’s my point: I have always been doing doc­u­men­taries. I made my first film in 1954 – you were not even born yet. And I have enjoyed meet­ing peo­ple. I have enjoyed shar­ing peo­ple with audi­ences. Small audi­ences though; I nev­er did it for the mon­ey. That’s why I am sur­prised that they gave me an Oscar invite. In my speech I say how I nev­er made mon­ey, but I got prizes and recog­ni­tion. At the Oscars night I was look­ing around. Jen­nifer Lawrence, she’s worth $4 mil­lion. Steven Spiel­berg, $15 mil­lion [ed: actu­al worth $3.6 bil­lion]. I was imag­in­ing their val­ue in mon­ey. It was like a field of mon­ey. I told them I was not bank­able. I couldn’t bring mon­ey to any­body. I enjoy get­ting awards and some admi­ra­tion, but I don’t like to make a big fuss. I will just go on work­ing as long as I’m strong enough. It’s nice to be recog­nised. When you get the Oscar, your price goes up and the sales are better.

“The film of mine that is still best known is Cleo from 5 to 7. The most fun one is called One Hun­dred and One Nights. I did it to cel­e­brate 100 years of cin­e­ma, and I assem­bled all the famous actors in France, which I thought was impos­si­ble. The film was a fail­ure, but I enjoyed hav­ing all these actors vis­it­ing me. I don’t think you would have seen the film, because it was such a flop. I enjoyed that film ter­ri­bly, but nobody else did. This one, which I did with JR, I enjoyed very much. We enjoyed the fact that we could, with 55 years dif­fer­ence between us, have the same desires, the same feel­ing with peo­ple. He’s very fun­ny and easy with peo­ple. He has a truck with lad­ders and scaf­fold­ing and peo­ple jump on it and ask questions.

“Peo­ple have humour, and we tried to reflect that good mood and humour in the film. It was a real trip, real trav­el. There is a sur­prise at the end, because I thought we would meet Jean-Luc Godard, but he didn’t open the door. He gave a sequence to the film, he built some­thing by not being there, because I was shocked. Then I said, ​‘Let’s go to the lake and think about it’. I remem­ber the beau­ti­ful years I had when Jacques Demy and me were friends with Godard and Anna Kari­na, and we spent time togeth­er. She made up that line, ​‘J’sais pas quoi faire – What could I do?’ Because I say that to Jean, if he was near me he want­ed to help me, he was so nice. He’d say, ​‘What can I do?’ and take off his glass­es. I sent him the DVD of the film. So far, no news as to whether he’s watched it.”

Faces Places is released 21 Sep­tem­ber. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.