Review: TWO WOMEN

 by Rob DiCristino

More like Two Horny Women.

Summer movie season is here! Meryl Streep’s autocratic Miranda Priestly returns in The Devil Wears Prada 2! Star Wars’ newest pint-sized star makes his big-screen debut in The Mandalorian and Grogu! Christopher Nolan brings civilization’s most enduring heroic narrative to life in The Odyssey! And, of course, Canadian writer/director Chloé Robichaud remakes the ‘70s sex farce, Two Women in Gold! Adapted by Catherine Léger from her stage play — itself adapted from the original film; try to keep up — Two Women follows Florence (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman) and Violette (Laurence Leboeuf), a pair of restless housewives who embark on a shared journey of sexual rejuvenation. As they bone their way through every plumber and handyman in Quebec, they’ll rekindle the joie de vivre that domesticity once stripped away. And while it may lack the intellectual heft of cousins like Jean-Luc Goddard’s Masculine Féminin or Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Robichaud’s film is witty and charming enough to break up the coming onslaught of blockbuster tentpoles.

We begin with Violette, home on maternity leave and desperate to convince her husband (Félix Moati as Benoit) that the mysterious cawing sound she’s hearing — which evolves into one of the film’s better running gags — is the couple next door having performatively loud intercourse. The truth is way less sexy, unfortunately, as Florence reveals that she and her partner (Mani Soleymanlou as David) haven’t been at it in over a year. Florence’s libido has been dulled by anti-depressants, and David has been happy to trade less action in the bedroom for a more stable and emotionally balanced partner. It turns out Violette can relate: She and Benoit haven’t made inroads in that department since the birth of their daughter, most likely because Benoit’s been having an affair with his colleague, Eli (Juliette Gariépy). As David busies himself with their co-op’s greenhouse — the source of some jokes about carbon neutrality trends that would have been funnier around 2014 — Florence sets about getting her groove back. Vivian follows her lead, and middle-aged sex hijinks ensure.

Anchored by performances endearing enough to make us sympathize with a pair of serial philanderers and their dim-witted husbands, Two Women explores everything from double standards in gender dynamics to the “unnatural” arrangement that is sexual monogamy. Léger’s screenplay — presumably borrowed in part from Claude Fournier and Marie-José Raymond’s original — is brisk and upbeat, loaded with clever and disarming observations about modern marriage. There’s a blunt pragmatism to each character’s sensibilities that helps the film avoid many of the melodramatic confrontations typical of the genre, which becomes a more impressive — and infinitely funnier — accomplishment as each of their perversions is ultimately dismissed as an acceptable human weakness. Even the strumpet Eli resists easy stereotyping: One of the film’s best moments comes when she scoffs at Benoit’s insistence that he’d leave his wife for her if she asked, reassuring him that she has no real feelings for him and is simply using him for his pleasantly-shaped manhood.

It’s that kind of unsentimental comedy that keeps Two Women delightfully light and airy, but it’s hard not to feel like a film that hums as vibrantly as this one couldn’t do with a bit more hard-nosed dissection of the human nature it clearly understands so well. There’s a flippancy to its handling of heavier topics like suicide and sexual assault where a more socially-contentious approach might have helped elevate things just a tad. To wit: Florence and Vivian’s karaoke night out is interrupted when one of them slashes her wrist with a broken beer bottle, and a later sequence finds Daniel mixing anti-depressants with alcohol in what his emergency room doctor describes as a “cry for help.” Both incidents are dismissed without too much interrogation. That said, perhaps Two Women deserves some credit for not overextending itself for the sake of lofty ambitions. If you’re wondering whether or not I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth on this one, you’d be right! Perhaps I’m just as fickle and contradictory as the hot messes that make up the cast of this film. Go figure.

Yeah, I’ve rethought it, and I’m actually okay with where Two Women lands: There are no self-righteous proclamations about right and wrong, no short-sighted dismissals of any one way of life or another, and no second act misunderstandings that reduce the whole thing to a half-hearted genre exercise. See? You just watched me self-correct in real time. Okay. Let’s reset: While there’s very little about Two Women that will stick with you the next day — we need a term for a movie that holds a spot in your Letterboxd diary that you’ve completely memory-holed by the time you’re making your year-end lists — it’s perfectly acceptable for an evening’s diversion. In a summer movie season sure to be defined by high-stakes franchise IP like Toy Story 5 and Supergirl, Steven Spielberg's return to science fiction in Disclosure Day, and, I don’t know, whatever the hell Insidious: Out of the Further is (I’ll admit I lost track of that series a few movies ago; is “the Further” like the Upside-Down? I lost track of Stranger Things, too), there’s nothing wrong with an evening’s diversion.

Two Women hits select U.S. theaters on Friday, May 8th.