One Sings, the Other Doesn't

Agnès Varda found few takers for this chronicle of an unconventional friendship. Meeting in 1962, when student Valérie Mairesse helps single mother-of-two Thérèse Liotard terminate an unwanted pregnancy, the pair reunite a decade later to discover the former is fronting a radical all-girl band (awful songs!), while the latter works in a family planning clinic. By their final encounter, Mairesse has abandoned her Iranian husband and is raising her kids alone, while Liotard has married a doctor. As the shifting emotional and political attitudes suggest, this is an impartial film designed for the common woman - not critics and feminists, who detested it.