One Sings, the Other Doesn't (1977, Agnès Varda) (Patreon)

42/100

Second viewing, last seen at the 2000 Thessaloniki Film Festival. (Man, those were the days. Here, kid, fly to Greece and watch some movies. Hotel on the Mediterranean. All expenses paid!) "After a dozen Francophone variations on Helen Reddy's 'I Am Woman,'” I wrote at the time, "I felt the need to wallow in Elvis Costello's early back catalogue, just to recover my equilibrium." The songs really are pretty bad, featuring such Varda-penned lyrics as "Je suis femme / Je suis moi"...but they do at least reflect the theme, which is more or less the opening line of an enduring classic: "Sometimes it's hard to be a woman." Trouble is, the film becomes one long affirmation, to the point that it's resolutely anti-dramatic (and to my mind thus largely uninteresting). Initial section, set in 1962, is by far the strongest—partly because Pauline and Suzanne have a relationship that isn't almost entirely epistolary, partly because what happens with Jérôme constitutes the film's sole emotional tremor. Both women subsequently get involved with reproductive rights—Pauline via her music, Suzanne by working at the French equivalent of Planned Parenthood—but while there's no doubting Varda's passion for this subject, she doesn't so much tackle it as simply acknowledge its existence. Suzanne's toughest decision over the course of the film's two hours regards whether or not to get involved with a married man to whom she's attracted; spoiler alert, it's resolved when he casually informs her that he got divorced ("When?" "Yesterday"), whereupon they themselves wed and live happily ever after. Pauline leads a more tumultuous life, and at one point actually experiences something like a crisis...except it isn't, because she just decides to give up her nearly newborn infant in exchange for the father impregnating her again. I'm not a parent, but it doesn't work that way, does it? Even if it occasionally does, a whole lot more emotional groundwork needs to be laid for that choice than we get here; nothing in Valérie Mairesse's ardent performance suggests that Pauline would be so strangely cavalier/pragmatic. (If there's a feminist statement being made via this relinquishment and replacement, I confess that it escapes me. Read Amy Taubin's Criterion essay in search of guidance, but she doesn't address it apart from noting that it occurs. Neither does Varda in remarks written for the restoration's Cannes premiere.) Even ignoring that weirdness, though, Varda's fundamentally optimistic sensibility, which made her golden-years documentaries such a pleasure, just seems like a poor fit for this subject. She made a tediously nice film about a remarkably (and necessarily) angry era.