CUFF 2025: The caws of the Globe Cinema from Two Women
By Dianne Miranda, April 30 2025—
There’s a particular kind of thrill that comes with watching a spin on a raunchy, cheeky original from the 1970s — especially one that leans into its comical, cynical edges and even doubles down on them. Two Women is Chloé Robichaud’s bold modern adaptation of Claude Fournier’s Quebecois film Two Women in Gold. Set in a suburban Quebec eco-housing complex, the feature follows Florence (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman), Violette (Laurence Leboeuf) and a burgeoning friendship which then becomes the push to break free from their comfortable but stifling lives.
It might initially seem that a translator grappling with depression and suspicions of her husband’s infidelity and a new mother feeling isolated during her maternity leave might not be the most likely of friendships but their bond and proximity, sharing a wall between their bedrooms and whose apartments are only a balcony away and shared feelings of discontent, quickly turns into an unspoken understanding.
It only took a few minutes for the Globe Cinema to be filled with laughter as these two women realized the monotony of their domestic lives. There is a certain chemistry that just works between Florence and Violette. This all starts with the awkward first exchange of Violette asking Florence if they owned a crow, as she would hear caws from their bedroom. The scene sets the initially discomforting, turned brashful tone that blends tension, vulnerability and humour that we in the audience would indulge in the entirety of 100 minutes of the film.
Robichaud’s camera clearly adores these two women as she intimately portrays them with each captivating frame. There is this dichotomy that exists where one might see it as though they are confined in this complicated space — both physically in their cramped apartments, and emotionally as containers of the different roles in their lives — and where one might see them to exist with this intentionality as once they start to feel more liberated, we see them in sunlight.
Something that the film does well is showing how much incongruity and complexity exist within their lives. Two Women oscillates between these moments of absurd humour as shown by Florence and Violette navigating a series of steamy encounters with strangers like cable installers, plumbers or exterminators and the aching sincerity of their friendship, motherhood and romantic relationships.
Constantly abandoned, for instance by Violette’s infidel husband or Florence’s distant and emotionally negligent boyfriend, Florence and Violette turn to each other which ultimately becomes their necessary rebellion as they become not only each other’s friend, but also a mirror of their own struggles and a witness, someone who can see them in their full complexity. Florence and Violette are also not portrayed as villains nor martyrs. The audience is allowed to have their own opinions and thoughts about the women’s actions within their circumstances, but what is emphasized by Robichaud is subjectivity.
Although a standout strength of the film is how it resists over-explaining, allowing silence and emphasis on the two actresses’ excellent performance to do a lot of the narrative work, I do think it falls short slightly in how the film ends, as if there are no loose ends. The ending plays a little too neatly as if there is nothing to resolve or that things can just simply be left the way they are. It feels as though the film chooses closure over continuation, when in truth, Two Women’s power lies in this embrace of the messiness of desires, complicated realizations and the slow, more often the not, painful process of self-reclamation.
Nonetheless, watching Two Women during this 2025’s CUFF was a delight and it was refreshing to be a voice in the laughter that rippled through Globe Cinema. Two Women is a human and was a generous film that allowed those in the audience into the honest lives of Florence and Violette.