Rating: NR | Runtime: 100 minutes
Release Date: May 30th, 2025 (Canada) / April 24th, 2026 (USA)
Studio: Maison 4:3 / Joint Venture
Director(s): Chloé Robichaud
Writer(s): Catherine Léger / Catherine Léger (play) / Claude Fournier & Marie-José Raymond (film Two Women in Gold)

I don’t know much about birds.

Sex is on Violette’s (Laurence Leboeuf) mind as she tells her husband (Félix Moati’s Benoit) about the crow she heard. He’s not sure what she’s talking about, so she starts to approximate the sound with a knowing look. Finally, she admits she really thinks it’s the neighbor with whom they share a bedroom wall. Benoit is uncomfortable with the insinuation and leaves for a work trip shaking his head. Violette finds it frustratingly provocative enough to find out if it’s true.

She’s unaware that Florence (Karine Gonthier-Hyndman) and her boyfriend David (Mani Soleymanlou) haven’t had sex in years. This admission isn’t made with embarrassment, however. It’s simply a fact. And since Violette and Benoit haven’t since their baby’s birth, the two women are able to laugh about it and joke that the crow might actually be young Jessica (Sophie Nélisse) across the apartment complex courtyard. They still hire an exterminator just in case.

This corvid call is the catalyst for everything that follows in Chloé Robichaud’s Two Women, adapted by Catherine Léger from her own play that itself was inspired by the 1970 Claude Fournier comedy Two Women in Gold. Its similarity to orgasmic moans allows Violette and Florence the ability to admit their recent celibacy and discover that it’s less a product of desire than situation. Yes, children can become a hindrance, but so too can pills, deception, and apathy.

Because it only takes one look at that exterminator (Maxime Le Flaguais) for both to discover their libidos are intact. Violette has no choice but to fantasize since Benoit is never home. Florence doesn’t either since, despite her choice to stop taking anti-depressants with the goal of having sex, David has no interest. He thinks celibacy made their relationship better and decides to start taking anti-depressants to keep it up. Acting on that fantasy is therefore their only hope.

It’s impossible not to laugh as these two couples traverse the landmines riddling their unions now that stagnancy has set in. As is common in such stories, we watch the women confide in each other, the men doing the same, and their collective inability to stop being withholding from their respective partners. Because what is the obvious result of finding what they want outside their coupling? Joy. Enough to make those couplings joyful again too.

That’s the magic of liberation. It’s as though a weight has been lifted once Florence and Violette break free from the social constraints of monogamy to rekindle their sexuality on their own terms now that their men have already done the same without them (Benoit via an affair with Juliette Gariépy’s pragmatically blunt co-worker Eli and David with his greenhouse plants). Is the extramarital sex with a revolving door of tradesmen sustainable? Who cares?

This isn’t about sustainability. It’s about escaping the prisons their homes have become now that motherhood paused their careers (the hamster is more than a pet metaphorically). It’s about tearing down the hypocrisy of the patriarchy (Benoit finding out things about his wife through his mistress that he should have already known and getting angry how they make him look). It’s about putting themselves first … even if they discover that means going back to the status quo.

That last part is what makes the film so great. There are no moral judgments happening. No need for punitive measures. The reasons they’ve all strayed might not be equal, but the result is. So, the sex (or botany in David’s case) is as much a therapeutic necessity as the prescription drugs. It allows them to take stock in what they have and what they want in order to figure out if an overlap remains. Is it realistic? Maybe not. But that’s never been a prerequisite for a sex romp.

Where do the emotional and psychological benefits of their unions rate? Is looking the other way on the affairs worth not dissolving their love? Does the hollowness of those affairs (either planned in the women’s case or discovered in Benoit’s) remind them that they are already with someone to whom they’re sexually attractive on top of the familial bond? There’s no right answer and the film refuses to pretend the opposite.

Gonthier-Hyndman and Leboeuf are both fantastic as they seek to balance the scales of their lives. The way they go overboard flirting with the men they’ve invited into their homes under false pretenses to ensure there’s no confusion about consent (well … at least for those who aren’t oblivious like Fabien Cloutier). Their interactions with each other upon discovering a kindred spirit desperate to live. And their newfound lack of inhibition bleeding into their day-to-day.

Moati and Soleymanlou are great too in their obliviousness and self-sabotage. The nameless men being used as disposable sex objects all embrace the gender-swapping of the trope. And Gariépy’s unwaveringly confident cool really stands out as both an overall aspiration as far as knowing what she wants and not being afraid to pursue it and the epitome of a weak man’s (like Benoit) worst nightmare (a woman they can’t control). Robichaud and Léger cover all their bases.

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Laurence Leboeuf and Karine Gonthier-Hyndman in TWO WOMEN; courtesy of Joint Venture.