Madame Patate and Two Old Men
- Paulie
- Feb 12, 2023
- 4 min read
Happy valentines! Bit of an open goal this one isn’t it? In terms of theming I mean. Not saying romance is an open goal, in fact it’s quite hard actually as it turns out. But it’s the theme of this weeks letter because I’m in the pocket of the greetings cards industry. We’re going to take a look at two different ways love can be expressed, besides the conventional, give me a big sloppy kiss before I collapse into dust, type love.
Faces Places (2017)
The French have always had a very sexy relationship with cinema. In terms of output, France produces more films per year than any other European country, exporting more films than any other country in the world besides the United States. Why do I quote these rather stale figures? Because it was also the home of Belgian-born beloved little lady icon, Agnes Varda. Varda was a filmmaker who was central to the French New Wave cinema movement of the 1960s - radical films that used pioneering techniques which ripped up the rulebook in terms of style and composition - renown for championing the “little guy” in the most romantic ways. Making champions of the marginalised, by portraying people with the authenticity of a documentarian but the empathy of a poet.
Faces Places would be Varda’s second-to-last feature film, released two years before her passing in 2019. Accompanied by French photographer and street artist JR, Faces Places was filmed over the course of a year in four day bursts as the production compensated for Varda’s ailing health. The project sees Varda and JR meet various communities in rural France to produce street art memorialising them.
In Northern France, the pair meet Jeanine, the last inhabitant in a row of houses of former miners, condemned for demolition. Jeanine resists the proposed eviction fiercely, the last testament to the lively community she was once a part of. Varda and JR produce a mural of three miners on the walls, which local teens flock to take selfies in front of. But they also produce a mural of Jeanine on the front of her house, a black and white portrait of the woman, a survivor, a rebel. Jeanine comes out of the house, crosses the street and turns to look at the house. She is stoic, but reduced to tears. “What can I say? Nothing”. Varda dissolves some of the sadness, some of the inherited pain this miners daughter feels, simply to say “we are friends now”.
Faces Places exhibits acts of love that are selfless, driven by a burning desire to honour someone else, to remind them of who they are and why they should feel proud to be themselves. Varda left behind a body of work that consistently lifted up other people and she is fondly remembered in return. When Varda passed away, fans left heart-shaped potatoes at her Parisian home, a loving homage to the lady of the earth, madame patate.
Book of Longing (2007)
When Leonard Cohen passed away in 2016, he left behind a hugely influential body of work, including two late career books of poetry, Book of Longing and The Flame. Cohen’s Book of Longing reads like an old man who is reflecting on a long, successful, lonely career retold through patches of memory and the faded faces of old friends and old flames. It also includes one of my favourite poems, Robert Appears Again, a short exchange between Cohen and his friend Robert.
