VISAGES VILLAGES by Agnès Varda. A masterpiece.

Posted on by cinedetour

The 90-year-old director goes on the road with street artist JR to create remarkable, moving portraits of the people they meet. Here’s a wonderful warmth and playful indirectness to this essay/road movie in the classic nouvelle vague spirit, conjuring a semi-accidental narrative in the midst of what is ostensibly a documentary. 
It is a collaboration between the 90-year-old director Agnès Varda and a 35-year-old French street artist who styles himself simply JR and always wears a hat and dark glasses, indoors and out – an opaque mannerism, almost a disguise, which Varda compares to her old comrade Jean-Luc Godard, and which irritates her a little bit.

NICO 1988 by Susanna Nicchiarelli

Posted on by cinedetour

Approaching age 50, singer/songwriter Nico leads a solitary existence — far from her days as a Warhol superstar and celebrated vocalist for the Velvet Underground in the 1960s. Her life and career on the fringes, Nico’s new manager convinces her to hit the road again and tour in Europe to promote her latest album. Struggling with demons and the consequences of a muddled life, she longs to rebuild a relationship with her son, whose custody she lost long ago.