Femmes femmes is a French film comedy-drama first released in 1974, directed by Paul Vecchiali.  The film stars Hélène Surgère, Sonia Saviange, Michel Duchaussoy, Michel Delahaye and Huguette Forge.  It has also been released under the title: Women Women.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


In their small Parisian apartment overlooking a cemetery, two over-the-hill actresses take solace in each other’s company against a world which no longer appreciates their talents.  While Sonia perseveres with small acting jobs in commercials and minor productions, her friend Hélène accepts that her best days are behind her and so turns to odd jobs such as dressmaking and housecleaning to pay the bills.  At one time, both were married to Julien, one of their former directors, but he has since re-married, whilst they remain single.  The only men in Sonia and Hélène’s lives are the fleeting apparitions who occasionally visit their apartment – an ironic doctor, a romantic deliveryman, a lonely man with a perverse fantasy, and others.  With no future to look forward to, the two women resort increasingly to drink to help ease the pain of their hopeless day-to-day existence...

One of the less well-known directors of the French New Wave, Paul Vecchiali was a creative talent whose films were every bit as distinctive, humanist and original as those of his contemporaries, Godard, Rivette and Truffaut.  Of the dozen films he made between 1966 and 1996, the one which is probably best remembered is Femmes femmes, which had acquired something of a cult status, on account of its sardonically kitsch theme (courtesy of musician Roland Vincent) and the near-camp excesses of its two lead actresses, Hélène Surgère and Sonia Saviange.  The legendary Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini was so taken by what he saw here that he cast these two actresses immediately afterwards in what was to be his final film, Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975).

It is extraordinary to think that Hélène Surgère and Sonia Saviange were virtually unknown when they made this film, yet Vecchiali could not have found a classier pair of thespians to portray his two tragicomic protagonists.   Under this director’s guiding hand, Surgère and Saviange make an attack of mid-life crisis appear only slightly less visceral than a mass carve-up in one of the less restrained slasher movies.  There’s not much blood here, only several hundred bucket-loads of angst.  It’s an ugly business growing old.

It is the close sisterly rapport between the main characters played by Surgère and Saviange, tinged perhaps with a soupçon of arsenic, that gives the film its bite and its pathos.  As Hélène and Sonia alternate between playful repartee, spiteful bitching and mutual wound-licking, we see the kind of friendship that only women can ever know, and Vecchiali shows a remarkable insight into the workings of the female psyche.  The two women are almost complete opposites and it is amusing to see how they differ in the way they cope with the difficulties that come their way.  Hélène lives in a rose-tinted past, but her life continues, champagne glass in one hand, feather duster in the other.  Sonia is in denial; she still believes she has a chance to make it big, and so chases after every opportunity that comes her way.  Femmes femmes is a witty yet also intensely cruel portrait of two contrasting personalities who realise they are slipping inexorably towards oblivion.  The humour of the situation may amuse us but we never lose sight of the darker truth that underpins it, and we are reminded that life, like a coin, has two sides – one marked comedy, the other tragedy.

With its narrow scope and confined setting, this film could have worked just as well as a stage play.  Virtually all of the narrative takes place in Hélène and Sonia’s apartment, and the film relies more on its script to paint pictures in our mind than clever photography or lavish sets.  And what a script – with echoes of Harold Pinter, John Osborne and Jean Cocteau in virtually every scene.  Femmes femmes may be a restrained piece of cinema, heavy on dialogue and filmed rather statically, yet its portrayal of two women facing up to the failure of their lives is as compelling a piece of drama that you could ever hope to watch - compelling and darkly whimsical.

© James Travers 2004

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