SYNOPSIS

In this story of friendship and reproductive rights, 14 years in the relationship between two very dissimilar women are chronicled. Pauline is a middle-class city girl, at odds with her very conventional family. Suzanne is several years older, a country girl with two illegitimate children and another (whom she cannot support) on the way. Pauline loans Suzanne money for an (illegal) abortion. At this point, the two separate and communicate mainly through postcards. Some years later, they meet at an abortion rally, and they have many adventures and stories to share with one another.

PROGRAM NOTE

After her debut feature La Pointe Courte (1955) and Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), Agnès VARDA, who wrote the songs of the film reconstructs the historical and feminist context of the time. At that time, the feminist commitment of well-known personalities such as Jeanne MOREAU, Marguerite DURAS, Catherine DENEUVE, Delphine SEYRIG... will be decisive and allow personal stories to join the great collective history and finally move on from a ‘private’ to a much more political field! Pomme and Suzanne’s pursuit of happiness is interconnected to their involvement in common commitments and the discovery of female solidarity.

In the history of this battle, the BOBIGNY trial resulted in the legalization of abortion (17 January 1975) advocated by Simone Veil then Minister of Health who after her hardest political fight obtains from the French Parliament the decriminalization of abortion.

Rare French mainstream feature drama to have dealt with this subject in the 1970s, the film shows two aspects of women\'s history in France: first, the women\'s rights movements that demand the control over their own bodies; secondly, the emergence of a women\'s cinema.

If the film\'s backdrop is that of the women’s rights movement, it is to youth that Agnès VARDA dedicates her story, a generation that was not really politically committed, but that the director chooses to embody in a joyous activism and egalitarian demands for a better society.

Always ranging from documentary to fiction, Agnès VARDA is a living example of Simone de Beauvoir’s words and feminist worldwide slogan: \"One is not born a woman, one becomes one.\" [Jackie BUET]