Why does the 30-something Quebecoise filmmaker cohort want to delve into the exhausted porn cliche of unfulfilled wives having their sexual needs catered to by hot handymen? In 2023 Monia Chokri’s OK dramedy The Nature of Love received a nomination at Cannes and ended up winning a César for best foreign film. Now, Chloé Robichaud (Sara Prefers to Run) is competing in the Sundance World Dramatic competition with “Two Women” a quintessentially Quebec cringe rendition of cult classics from the 1970s erotic romp Deux femmes en or.
Catherine Léger, the writer and producer, adapted the film into a successful stage play, which in its theatre iteration seemingly came with a sharp dose of irony, an ingredient sorely lacking in this earnest naturalistic misfire. Trying to find some redeeming quality in Robichaud’s film, one could only expect it to be her two leads, which in this case would be Karine Gonthier-Hyndman and Laurence Leboeuf, who put up half-decent performances.
A large portion of the plot unfolds in an eyesore of an eco-housing coop on the outskirts of Montreal, which, on the inside, is a claustrophobic confinement. Florence, the translator (Gonthier-Hyndman), and Violette, a new mother (Leboeuf), happen to be neighbors. For some reason, both of them seem to have developed some sort of mental health problem after having kids. The two women bond over an unfulfilling sex life, and eventually, they decide they need to do something about it.
Florence has not had sex in years with David (Mani Soleymanlou), her coop’s greenhouse-obsessed nerd boyfriend whom she does have some affection for. We are told that he is technologically boring.
It is a tad too on the nose that her 10-year-old son Max (Mateo Laurent Menbreño Daigle) has a caged hamster called Florence, who chomped on her babies. Florence the human has been on antidepressants for ages, but she still has memories of before when she was wild and fun. When she chooses to go off her meds, David decides to commence them. In what is perhaps the funniest line of the film (which gives a notion of the level of humor on display), he tells her, Our relationship works best when one of us is on antidepressants.
With her thin frame, Violette with her petite blonde hair a while ago was revealed as equally vexed by her bedroom. Benoit (Félix Moati), a smarmy pharmaceutical salesman has quiet errant sex with his co-worker El. As his wife, some intuition warns her that as a mother silenced around the house, she can’t hear, and overhears the unsettling sounds of violent crows squawking.
As the rugged exterminator from Angels of Extermination starts to climb the ladder searching for the source of the noise Violette is making, both Violette and Florence seem to have a keen interest in where his rear end is positioned. My explanation of monogamy, which I repeat is the invention of men, telegrams that women will entice the male workers on the crass, yet unsmooth, farcical marks grab the attention of cringe enthusiasts way too much.
For some reason, feministic cellulite-laden boudoir comedies aimed at the genteel sex demand absurd plots, so they playfully taunt with cutesy sexism draped in subversive, elusive critique. Instead of showing the legs under such abrasive techniques, they just eliminate the main female roles as typically troublesome culminating in a lack of alarming decisions. Mentioned Violette is headed back to some sort of work, both give a glimpse enough in advance signaling mute woman waiting in kettle clue infinite time, currently going through some glaring gaps of showing her life-beat above the dull pulse basics, but rescheduled waves multiple information drops for social media with poor self-restraint associated with over posting. As always, available to fulfill their true societal calling, Florence in this case exposes unique feminist deconstruction some chose to call theory on sexual dynamics, shocks with life but goes silent before showing action supposed to confirm myriad words truly claimed. A bizarre fact thus remains that beneath the skin of content unfashionably modern fitted, supposedly competent, and sexually liberated female role, winds up in the arms of married man Benoit Eli, a completely unmasked mistress.
One of the film’s few other strong points is Sara Mishara’s 35mm cinematography Viking which expands the otherwise contained setting through sparkling nighttime visuals of Montreal, trains, and children playing.
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