Two Women Review
Violette (Laurence Leboeuf) is on maternity leave, and is fed up of frequently being left alone with the baby for long periods while her husband (Félix Moati) is on business trips and/or seeing his lover (Juliette Gariépy). Florence (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman) lives in the apartment next door, and has lost her libido thanks to her anti-depressants. Both women are lonely, and fed up with lives that feel tedious and claustrophobic.
But when Florence stops taking her medication, her libido comes roaring back. Although that comes as a disconcerting development to her partner David (Mani Soleymanlou), who’d become used to this new stage of their relationship, Violette finds Florence’s embrace of sexual voraciousness liberating. The two women embark upon an unexpected adventure that turns their lives, and the lives of everyone in their orbit, upside down.
Two Women – directed by French-Canadian filmmaker Chloé Robichaud, based on the 1970 movie Two Women in Gold – is a very funny film. A lot of the humour derives from the willingness of the two lead actresses to go for broke in the most ridiculous of situations. Karine Gonthier-Hyndman is exceptionally dynamic as the instigator of this apartment block-centred sexual revolution, who takes to her new vocation with the wild-eyed fervour of a cult inductee.
There’s a self-aware silliness to the fact that so many of Violette and Florence’s conquests are handymen. The two women make up ridiculous excuses to call them out (at one point, Violette steals some of Florence’s son’s hamster droppings, to entice an exterminator), and the contractors in question are only too happy to engage. To worry about the power imbalance in such arrangements, or that things could take a nasty turn for our heroines, would be reasonable, but there’s something in the tone of Two Women that assures us that won’t happen. Sex here is utopian and freeing, often a bit ridiculous (that the sex scenes are simultaneously sensual and silly is one of the film’s biggest achievements), not something that threatens any risk to safety.
Yet that doesn’t mean the movie is without weight. Despite all the sexual shenanigans, Two Women carries with it a surprisingly melancholic tone. Violette and Florence were both deeply lonely in their lives; Florence tries to cut her wrists one evening when the two go out drinking. Their partners are confused at how to help, sometimes actively hurt, and have their own problems too; “Does everything always need to be better?”, David asks at one point, exhausted and isolated by the sudden change in his partner’s mental state. Although this is a sex comedy first and foremost, it’s one that cares about its characters, and where they and their relationships will end up after the hijinks have ended.
While not all of the jokes here land, that Two Women is able to balance humour, raunch and thoughtfulness with such a high success rate, especially in a film era where tastes are generally trending towards the puritanical, is something unusual and admirable. Vive la révolution indeed.
★★★★
