EDITION 11:

L’Une Chante, L’Autre Pas

Women in the field

What you will find in this issue

1. Charlotte’s analysis of the movie

2. Lucie’s analysis of the set design

3. Link to our past posts

From Charlotte: a film analysis

Intro

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (L’une Chante, L’autre Pas) directed by renowned French New Wave filmmaker Agnès Varda in 1977 is a fiction following the friendship of two young women and overall feminist movement during the 1960s. The film starts in 1962 as we encounter the two main characters, Pauline, a 17 years old obstinate and passionate singer and Susan, at the time 22 years old, mother of two children, Marie and Matthieu. She is pregnant for a third time but cannot take responsibility for it as she is principally alone, as the father (of both Marie and Matthieu) happens to be a married man that does not supply and support his family. Pauline helps her to get the money to abort before a jump in time. Ten years later, after the events of May 68, Pauline, now referred to as Pomme and Susan reconnect at a feminist protest in Paris before the latter travels back to the countryside. From then, they promise to never lose touch. With the impetus and mutual support the two women bring to each other, Susan moves to a sunnier city to open an abortion center. The correspondence between the two continues as Pomme is in Iran for a few months, gets pregnant and married.

When she is about to give birth, she decides to come back to France as she cannot stand the women’s static posture she is ordered to adopt in Iran to stay with her devoted friend before pursuing her passion, singing and performing. For Pomme, “the danger was to stop”. This claim is even more relevant as she finds herself pregnant, under the ascendency of a man and the torpor brought by the sun, driving her away from her naturally dynamic character and bringing her closer to a position of verticality. After her son’s birth, without putting words on it, the two friends explore alternative ways of raising a child as they move away from the traditional pattern of a heterosexual couple staying together to create a conventional family.

Multiple communities are seen throughout the film with different dynamics. The first one being Pomme’s only girls school and choir, the second one while she is in Amsterdam to get an abortion, experiencing what Susan had to go through a decade before when she was alone, in a much more overall dull ambiance. 

As for Susan, she is surrounded by women firstly in the factory she is working at in the countryside and then in her office. For the latter, being alone (by that, she means not having a partner) means not being a fulfilled woman. Her being highly subject to the male gaze is somehow contradictory, but the film is not afraid to show women’s journey on deconstruction, the doubts that come with it at that time and even internalised patterns of linguistic violence. There is a scene where Susan shouts to a woman that bought an abortion pill but did not take it. She is caught in the act by another female character and notices that she is perpetrating alienation on an ally and that perhaps if she feels so powerless it might be because she is a “civil servant or an activist sitting behind a desk”. 

In this perhaps less radical feminism, towards the end of the film, as Susan “finally” gets remarried, she feels “at ease” for not being “on the margins of social norms”, passing on her legacy and hard labour to her daughter’s generation. The ending scene even shows Marie, young, well impregnated with her mother’s aspirations, embodying hope for future generations. Continuity is an axis of analysis as it is an omnipresent theme. Every generation is present, whilst preserving the two women’s perspectives and own experiences, with a prominent presence of children.

The film is a visually stunning piece that carries the viewers along not only those two women’s journeys and touching friendship, but also a whole determining and groundbreaking movement of women’s emancipation and mobilisation.

From Lucie: a set design study

Intro

This movie is a fabulous example of how effective set design and props can be at enhancing the depth of a character’s mentality and inner struggles. Indeed, throughout Varda’s piece, these tools as well as colour are used almost as a parallel underlying narrative, both discussing relationship dynamics and inner conflicts.

The use of props and set design to hint at Suzanne’s character development

One of the most important shifts in the film is the suicide of Jerome, Suzanne’s lover and father of her two children. If it takes the viewer by surprise and creates a sentiment of shock in both the characters and the audience, the set design of his studio seems to be hinting at his mental difficulties since the start. Indeed, the movie begins in this very studio with Pomme coming in and telling him, whilst being fully unaware of his identity, that his work makes her angry. She cannot stand how sad and victimised the women in his pictures look. Later, right before his suicide, Jerome tells Suzanne that he cannot stand to go outside and see the misery in people’s eyes. Yet, that’s all that he has surrounded himself with in this studio. At the start of the film, the amount of pictures on the walls is almost suffocating, as if they are all calling out for help.

Later, when Pomme finds him hung to the ceiling of his studio, all we can see behind him are photographs that he has taken of Suzanne. This brings us back to that one scene at the starts when Pomme recognises her in the images and says that she is shocked at how sad she looks in this photographs. Jerome then jokingly says that it must be his fault and reveals the nature of their relationship. Later, seeing him surrounded by only the images of his wife after killing himself shows how haunted he was by her, by what he feels he had done to her. This is a powerful example of how set can deepen one’s understanding of the mental struggles of a character.

To continue we can examine the use of set design in Suzanne’s childhood farm where she goes to seek refuge back with her parents who strongly disapprove of her. As she is reading aloud the letter she’s writing to Pomme, she states how frozen she felt during the years she spent there. Simultaneously, you can see frames of he parents, completely still, only making small repetitive movements such as stirring one’s soup. This tells us how there is no growth in this environment, only a routine which you get trapped in. 

As time passes, movement is slowly being re-introduce to this space by the children. They are the ones who bring this farm back to life, just like they will push their mother to learn new skills and escape potential misery. Since her arrival there Suzanne is portrayed to us carrying heavy materials, referring to the emotional baggage she is carrying with her. As time passes and as she joins the “family of women” at the toy fabric, get her first pay check and first sent of freedom, you finally see her walking without carrying anything.

She has finally rid herself of this emotional baggage and trauma weighting her down from her past life with Jerome.

As soon as she moves to Hyeres, the colours of her cloths get lighter, and most importantly she is almost practically filmed being outside, in nature or in her garden. This hints at her newly found freedom, her newly found sense of self and that she isn’t hiding anymore (strong juxtaposition with her being trapped in Jerome’s apartment with the children at the start of the film).

Lastly, even with time passing, her life changing, the past still seems as if it is sacred, something that she never tried to hide away. Indeed, when Pomme returns from Iran pregnant to go see Suzanne, she is seen laying in Suzanne’s living room, with for background the same fabric which was put up in Jerome’s flat around their bed. In addition, it is precisely at this time that Pomme starts talking about him for the first time since his death. The house they all end up at at the end of the film is also filled with pictures of the past, further re-affirming their respect of the past and acknowledgment of growth.

Set design as a way of understanding the needs of Pomme

Another event which could be considered as a shifting point in the film is Pomme’s time in Amsterdam, both because it’s where she met with Darius and also because it’s the moment where she got an abortion. When we are introduced to Darius and the other women who are going through the same procedure, none of the set is really revealed to the viewer. The reason why this is so significant is because it tell the audience only very little about these women. By knowing almost nothing about them, they are all put at equality. No matter where they come from, no matter what they owned, they all ended up together. The set is not shown to us because it’s not about where they are but about the fact that they are together. 

To continue, their boat trip on the canal is also a powerful way to communicate to the viewer how they remain somewhat alienated from the rest of the population in this moment. Indeed they see the city but from afar, they are not existing in it, there is no real place for them apart from that liminal space which is the river. The river is also a symbol of both the passage of time, life’s perpetual movements as well as the changes and transformations they are going through. Indeed, seen as a symbol of the passage of time, the river is simply showing that going through this procedure will not stop their lives, how the world keeps on turning. On the other hand “A river often represents a physical or metaphorical journey, with characters navigating its course as they confront challenges or discover truths”.

To continue, it’s important to acknowledge that Pomme is, to her core, a character that needs to always be in movement. Indeed, throughout the film she is almost shown in action at the exception of intimate quiet moments with Darius. In Iran, when she first expresses her feeling of entrapment she is standing in front of an open window. This architectural feature is a foreshadowing of her future departure and of the strength of her free will. She will never let herself get fully entrapped and is determined to always have a way out. 

Lastly, the shift from living in a house with her husband and in a country that she doesn’t speak the language of and where she spends almost no time outside (as she said the streets there belong to the men) to living in a van, touring France with a group of girls establish her desperate need to live in community, to live in a state of constant movement.

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