“Getting older, colour does me good.” So says Agnès Varda of her late life fashion choices in an interview promoting Faces Places (in French, Visages Villages), (1) though a broader interpretation of this statement is also applicable. Released in 2017, the film documents then 88-year-old Varda’s exploits with 33-year-old street artist J.R., as they take to the French countryside to make large-scale photographic murals with locals they befriend. Playful, entertaining, whimsical and infused with tenderness, this is surely an extension of the “colour” to which Varda refers. For geriatricians, this remarkable movie is a magnified reflection of the humour, insights and generosity of older people, an aspect of our work that we underplay at our peril [2].

Varda’s career spanned a phenomenal seven decades, with her last film (Varda by Agnès) coming out in the same year as both her 90th birthday and her death. Not only was Varda productive up until the very end of her long life, she continued to innovate, educate and provide us with art that is all the more valuable for the age at which she created it. Faces Places is a robust example of this. The film, coming in at just eighty-nine minutes, is subtle in its approach, unconcerned with flash and pomp. It meets its subjects with warm yet delicate openness, inviting participants to share at their own pace and discretion. Varda recognises the worth in the stories of others, rich with wisdom, history and meaning. Focus beyond oneself, wide-reaching perspective, universal respect for others; these are attributes than only come from experience—and, thus, from age.

This is not to say Faces Places is conservative or unimaginative. Varda’s trademark visual flourish is appreciable throughout the film, clever and confident in unpredictable ways, that of an assured filmmaker who still has the both the drive and the capacity to experiment. Does this make Varda a rebel amongst her contemporary demographic, that is women over the age of eighty, of whom society would say crave routine and safety? It is more correct to say that Varda proves these attitudes to older women represent a gross underestimation of their capabilities.

It is well known that women live longer than men. The reasons for this have generally been attributed to differences in cardiovascular risk profiles, with some epidemiologists developing more nuanced models of causality [3]. Less well-recognised, though equally well-verified, is that rates of disability and morbidity in later life for women are conversely higher than for men. Women demonstrate much higher prevalence of activity-limiting conditions such as neurodegenerative illness and musculoskeletal disease [4]. In short, women appear to win in quantity of health, but not quality. A diverse range of hypotheses currently exists as to why, ranging from the psychosocial to the molecular [4], but the effect on our perception of older women is the same: we view them as frail, vulnerable and dependent, and to a greater degree than their male counterparts. However, as this film displays, once we see the inner life and vitality of older people, we cannot retreat to a vision defined by their disability, (5) eloquently captured in the title of a key paper, “I may be frail but I ain’t no failure” [6].

Agnès Varda knows she is an old woman. She refers to it regularly throughout Faces Places, talks about her arthritis and visual impairment, and references mobility and cognitive issues. Even death is discussed with a frankness that comes unexpectedly though very naturally. Themes of memory and community run through the film; we look back, and we look around, and we are less preoccupied with looking forward. Feminism also has pride of place, telling us she has not strayed too far from her long-held objectives. Nor has she lost her sense of adventure. “Chance has always been by greatest assistant,” she says at the outset of the film. Perhaps because of her status and career, she has been afforded more freedom and enablement than other women her age, but this only highlights a disservice to those other women.

Previous models of “successful” ageing necessitated the adoption or maintenance of youthful pursuits, a concept modern gerontology has challenged [7]. Society also has a tendency to project typically male attributes onto successful women, and parallels have been drawn between these two biases [8]. The underlying theory is the same: we have set a standard for what is deemed “good”, “worthy”, “successful”, and any deviation from this is considered failure. Mainstream society is moving away from such assumptions regarding gender, yet lags woefully behind when it comes to differences in age.

In Faces Places, however, Varda is not trying to defeat the aging process or deny it. She has instead found a way to move forward in tandem with it, using age as both motivation and inspiration. Just as she upended conventions of gender in her early work, she is now playing with the notion of her age, dissecting and distilling it. Even the seemingly serendipitous pairing with J.R., a giddy street artist 60 years her junior, feels like a direct challenge to her status as an “old woman”. Interestingly, Faces Places was filmed over two years, with Varda only shooting four days a month. This episodic-style schedule was designed to limit the physical toll on her body, but Varda also states that the time in between became instrumental for her to “think of new ideas” [9]. The film, a mosaic of vignettes, reflects this; each new destination feels fresh and distinct from the others while united by common themes. It illustrates neatly the ageing paradigm of Baltes and Baltes, that is achievement through selection, optimization and compensation [10].

Taking all this into consideration, we have in Faces Places something very special: an artwork that is a product of both the biological and the socio-cultural aspects of ageing, too often considered in isolation of each other, and one that demonstrates their combined value. This is not the only film than Agnès Varda could make (or did make) at this age, but only Agnès Varda at this age could have made this film. Just as her work was pioneering in establishing women in cinema in the 1960s, Varda in later life has become a champion of the possibilities of age and cinema. Moreover, she redefines what it means to be an “old woman”, turning a traditionally held weakness into a source of strength and pride.