L'une chante, l'autre pas (Agnès Varda, 1977)

One Sings, the Other Doesn't charts the progress of the friendship and lives of two women over 14 years. One is a mother who becomes widowed at an early age and the other a hippyish free spirit composing feminist-themed songs, of which the film contains many in a semi-musical style. The relationship is depicted in a thoughtful and relatable manner, and the wholly female perspective is refreshing, if disheartening at the same time as it underlines how far removed most cinema is from that. However, it's also badly dated in its viewpoint of gender politics and heavily burdened by dialogue that is either polemic or characters externalising their thoughts with unnatural directness, which is effective at first until you realise that all the characters do it. One also suspects that the songs, with some ludicrous lyrics by the director, are not there to be laughed at, which is a pity as many of them are hilarious.

5/10