FACES PLACES — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

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There is beautiful chemistry between the legendary 88-year-old French New Wave filmmaker Agnes Varda and JR, the youthful French photographer who cares for Varda as a loyal would-be grandson of artistic intentions.

JR and Varda share directing credits for this disarmingly sweet and poignant documentary that plays more as a docudrama due to the circumstance of uncertainty regarding Ms. Varda’s health.

The movie is a nuanced sociological study of French culture. Needless to say, the amount of pretense on display is near zero.

Think of it as neo-realistic French New Wave ethnographic study in B minor. The personal and artistic elements are articulated to their fullest — a rare cinematic, event to say the least. It doesn't hurt that JR and Agnes Varda are two of the most endearing human beings you'd ever want to spend two hours of your life with. 

The harmonious pair of inspired film-project pals travel to small towns in France in a Mercedes Benz truck decorated to resemble a giant camera. Already we are in a filmic world. The sides of JR’s fancy mode of transportation includes a photo booth where locals are photographed. The truck then prints out black-and-white portraits on gigantic sheets of paper that JR pastes to the sides of buildings to create dramatic personalized statements about the significance of human faces and truth.

Although Varda’s vision is constantly blurry due to an eye condition, she complains about JR’s proclivity for always wearing sunglasses. She wants to see his eyes. But it is clear that JR separates himself as an artist from his subject so that your attention can focus on the art rather than the artist.

“Faces Places” is a film you discover and revel in the joy of its simplicity, patience, and naturalistic discourse. Like all of Varda’s films, this one is special. It won this year’s L’Oeil d’or at Cannes for good reason. If you only see one film at NYFF55, “Faces Places” is the one to watch.

Not Rated. 89 minutes.

THE B-SIDE — NYFF 54

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Documentarian extraordinaire Errol Morris has crafted his sweetest film to date. Morris’s filmic love letter to his longtime friend, photographer Elsa Dorfman, is a deceptively straight-forward telling of Dorfman's progress as a portrait photographer in the early ‘80s.

Dorfman’s chosen photographic format, a Polaroid Land 20x24 camera provides a topical conversation piece for the documentary to contextualize a social landscape that includes Beat poets, musicians, and families who sat before Elsa Dorfman in her Cambridge, Massachusetts studio. Poloroid's eventual collapse plays heavily into the narrative. 

Elsa’s [oversized] photos give the film its “B-Side” title; she always took two shots for her clients to choose from. Naturally, many of the rejected images are better than the chosen versions. Part character study and part social expose, “The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography” examines the artistic process of a woman whose divinely quirky personality informs her formerly overlooked career.

Elsa Dorfman may never have received the accolades she deserved from the art world, but Errol Morris’s delightful documentary does her, and her lush photographs of icons such as Jonathan Richman, Alan Ginsberg, and Jorge Luis Borges, justice.

Rated R. 78 mins. 

DE PALMA — NYFF53

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More edited than directed, “De Palma” is rightfully content to let the director of such classics as “Carrie” and “Scarface” tell the story of his career.

Seated comfortably in front of a fireplace, Brian De Palma retraces his steps over the past 50 years that put him in the “New Hollywood” company of Steven Spielberg, Geroge Lucas, and Martin Scorsese.

De Palma forcefully maintains that for all of the adoration poured on Alfred Hitchcock, that he [De Palma] was the only filmmaker to embrace Hitchcock’s techniques and style. Sure he’s leaving out Claude Chabrol, but so what; he’s making a point.

From a cinephile’s perspective, hearing De Palma go on at length about nearly all of his movies in chronological order they were made is about as good as it gets. Co-directors Jake Paltrow and Noah Baumbach fulfill their role as documentarians by virtue of their congenial relationship with De Palma that allows him to be candid, funny, and insightful about a career filled with highs and lows.

It may be a no-brainer to attach appropriate clips from films like “Sisters” and “Blow-Out” under De Palma’s fascinating descriptions of making the films, but this is exactly what the film demands, and what the audience expects and deserves.

Seeing a young Robert De Niro acting in a couple of De Palma’s early student films while studying filmmaking at Sarah Lawrence is a pure kick. Hearing the filmmaker discuss his use of split-screen imagery on “Sisters,” while watching the effect achieve his desired result of increasing suspense, is better than anything you’ll learn in film school. Indeed, “De Palma” serves as a multifaceted lesson in filmmaking, directing, and the joys of making movies during the ‘70s golden era when anything seemed possible.

Especially enjoyable are De Palma’s anecdotes about such things as the way Sean Penn taunted Michael J. Fox on the set of his 1989 film “Casualties of War” in order to get the desired result from his co-star. “Television actor” never sounded so insulting.

Not Rated. 107 mins.