Word: varda
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...there is something, too, in the saga of the feminist groupie, Pomme, although most of her polemical songs and free-spirited antics are pretty silly. But the value of all this lies in its novelty, not in its depth. For in all her feminist enthusiasm, French director Agnes Varda fails to delve beyond the difficult circumstances of these women's lives to probe into their hearts and psyches. The resolutions of the two journeys are too simple--the widow cautiously remarries and finds happiness, while the singer leaves her domineering husband and, lo and behold, also finds happiness. There...
...meets a pediatrician and gets married (which does not necessarily mean copping out if the man is as colorless and undefined as this doctor is). When the film ends it is 1976 and Pomme and Suzanne are together again, completely fulfilled by their extended families, guitars and old photographs. Varda concludes her makeshift friendship by telling us, "They were alike; they had fought to gain the happiness of being a woman...
POMME AND SUZANNE are supposed to symbolize the new consciousness. They are, presumably, free to make their own choices about their minds and bodies. Varda tells us over and over again that this is so; she makes clear her intent in transitional narrative scenes throughout the film. Yet the characters themselves never make this felt. They know their own bodies, but not their own minds; their speech is no more than a succession of feminist slogans. Pomme childishly believes that she is redefining her position within society by abandoning her responsibilities and singing the praises of pregnancy in the streets...
Suzanne, tired of suffering and loneliness, cops out and fulfills the stereotypical mother's dream for her daughter in her marriage to an established doctor. Varda justifies the wedding by saying it was without bourgeois frills; for entertainment they played records and scrabble. Nevertheless, this marriage is disturbing, as are all of Varda's male-female relationships. There is no redifinition of a women's role in relation to a man here. If a man is dominant and aggressive the woman simply leaves him. If he is weak and easily patronized the women can stay. There are no struggles...
...Varda's film is not as harmless as her lyrics. It is upsetting because it can and is being taken seriously. Those who have eagerly awaited a so-called "feminist film" are jumping on Varda's bandwagon, pushing her on to popular success. When Varda's silly women start being called "symbols" they aren't so funny any more...