Another choice lifted from Kael's When the Lights Go Down , this French film has been alternately labeled a 'folk opera' or a feminist musical. Musically it's pretty forgettable -- one of the two lead characters, Pomme (Apple, played by Valerie Mairesse) is a singer of dubious renown, despite nearer the outset feeling as though she is going to be some sort of massive star. She never finds anything larger than an odd smattering of curious passersby willing to pay attention to her 'pro-choice' infused songs; this aspect of the film, her trajectory as the obvious half of the duo who sings -- as opposed to Suzanne who, as the film title suggests, does not -- is not horribly interesting. Does she sing well? Sure. Is this factoid central to the film's plot? No.
What stands out is the playing out of the two's friendship over roughly a ten year period, beginning with a coming together over the central theme: reproductive rights, which are clearly in a state of angsty flux in 1962 France. Suzanne begs money from her parents to help Pomme get to Switzerland for an abortion -- she then goes on to climb out of anonymity to a position where she can help other women in similar dire circumstances obtain abortions.
Pomme goes her own less 'straight' path, falling in love with a Persian named Darius, and pursuing her musical career. Though nothing is precisely straightforward about the two friend's paths, and they never settle into a static friendship 'rhythm' -- Pomme is a wanderer, while Suzanne wants, ironically, the stability of white picket fence etc. The two are, despite geographic separation, never far, at least not from our perspective as third person voyeur (there is a female narrator who occasionally chimes in to fill in details where there are breaks in the storyline) where we observe their closeness via that old gem the postcard. Herein lies the film's charm: there is an inevitability about their relationship, sometimes apparent despite the terseness of some of the postal exchanges. They are, so to speak, 'solid'.
Which raises another, perhaps not so obvious observation: this film would be very different if made today. The postcard makes for a certain pace that, say, a constant stream of texting back and fro would have destroyed. The film is soft-spoken. Emotions are always tempered even in what we might expect to be the heat of specific moments and turning points in the film; it is nothing if not subtle.
From my vantage point, the reproductive rights theme was certainly obvious, to the point of in your face explicit in the song lyrics, for example, but this was a 'best buddies' flick when all is said and done. The enviable solidarity and closeness that is the female kinship is what is on exhibit, a friendship that exists in spite of the men that flit in and out of these women's lives. I enjoyed it quite a bit just on this level, again, without too much thought given to the rare diegetic musical number (this isn't Hair, for example): those were distractions at best.
Suzanne is stunning (played by Therese Liotard) -- she never for one moment looks anything other than radiant. Likewise, the photography is gorgeous, capturing the timeless France we all know, from medieval village to the tree-lined fields, just beautiful vista after vista. The imagery is postcard within postcard, My final sense of this film is a bit ambivalent -- a pleasant journey without anything epic or mind-blowing in the drama: an herbal tea at the end of the day?
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