French title: L’une chante, l’autres pas
French New Wave pioneer Agnès Varda’s ode to female friendship and women’s liberation, One Sings, the Other Doesn’t traces the bond between two women over a dozen years, beginning in 1962.
A light feminist streak runs through Agnes Varda’s “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t,” a tale of female friendship. It spans 14 years in the relationship between two very different women. Pauline (Valerie Mairesse) is a middle-class city girl, at odds with her very conventional and bourgeois family. Suzanne (Therese Liotard) is several years older, a country girl with two illegitimate children and another on the way.
My Grade: B_
That bond is forged when Apple (Valérie Mairesse), a 17-year-old with a fiercely independent streak, secures the money needed for her new friend Suzanne (Thérèse Liotard), an overwhelmed mother of two toddlers, to have a safe abortion — across the French border, in Switzerland. “Free will is philosophy in action,” the feisty teen proclaims, and when she and Suzanne meet again, 10 years later, they’re both participating in a courthouse protest over an abortion trial.
Pauline loans Suzanne money for an illegal abortion. At this point, due to social circumstances, the two femmes separate and communicate mainly through postcards. Years later, they meet at an abortion rally, and they have many adventures and stories to share.
This drama with songs (lyrics by Varda) unfolds against the political awakening of the 1960s and 1970s, when gender roles and the idea of family were being questioned and contested.
Varda’s feminist vision embraces love, whimsy, joyful bohemia and tenderness as well as anger over injustice.
Credits
Running time: 120 minutes.
Directed By: Agnès Varda
March 9, 1977.
Written in 1990, updated in 2022
Criterion Edition
Director-Approved Special Edition Features
New 2K digital restoration, supervised by Varda and photographer Charlie Van Damme, with monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Women Are Naturally Creative: Agnès Varda, a 1977 documentary directed by Katja Raganelli, includes interview with Varda, shot during the filmmaking, and on-set interviews with actors Valérie Mairesse and Thérèse Liotard
Réponse de femmes, a 1975 short film by Varda, on the question “What is a woman?”
Plaisir d’amour en Iran, a 1977 short film by Varda, starring Mairesse and Ali Raffi
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
