Two Women

There is a long debate about the need and place for remakes. This reviewer has always argued that even if the original was great, why not remake a story? If the source material is a novel, for instance, why not do a new adaptation? Yet, when the earlier work was original, the question truly becomes, why is it important that this gets made? The original version of Two Women, the new sex comedy from French Canadian writer director Chloe Robichaud, working from a script by Cahterine Leger,  is based on the 1970 film Two Women in Gold by Claude Founier and, sadly, it shows.

Courtesy Joint Venture

This is because this is a film where everything about it screams 1970s, rather than 2026. The basic structure is off, and for a film billed as a sex comedy, the sex scenes are not that compelling. Indeed, they are mostly silly, awkward and obvious, rather than fun or sexy. The best sexual moment in the film may be a brief moment where one person flashes another, but that moment does not rise above the cute or predictable. It does not help that other recent films, such as the recent Splitsville, have also covered related ground and done it in a far more meaningful, relevant and entertaining way.

Here, the film struggles to maintain any connection to the modern world beyond window dressing, such as visual clues of technology or mentions of things like #MeToo. The film is a dragonfly in amber, a relic of the 1970s sexual liberation, but one that is not as hip, daring or deep as it would believe itself to be. The original film was not, either. There was a better film to be had, here, but this is not it. It does not help that the performers involved do little to draw in the viewer.

Courtesy Joint Venture

It is a shame, because the performers and film maker have done good work before, but here, there is something missing and it seems to be freedom. Here, they are apparently shackled to the past which anchors the source material. Indeed, had they found a way to rise above the questionable original, there might be a way to salvage this into something which can be recommended, but in the current form, this cannot. It is not a technically faulty film, and indeed, the visuals might be the best part of the film.

At times, the aesthetic hints at an almost Wes Anderson style, though without the energy and self-aggrandizement present in Anderson’s works. The color scheme helps to paper over the sometimes seemingly endless parade of porn-level cliches, with the two bored housewives of the title going for many sexual adventures with handymen and women. You would almost expect the music to kick in like something off a Family Guy cutaway, and a pizza with “extra sausage” to be getting delivered. Instead, the film exists seemingly to be a copy and paste of a film that is nearly sixty years old.

Courtesy Joint Venture

If the bones of that original film had been used to say something meaningful about modern intimate relations, or the eternal, that would be one thing. Instead, everything is stuck in 70s mode, with the women never rising above the level of sex objects and bored wives. It is a film that sees sexual and emotional liberation from a purely physical point of view and which confuses volume for quantity, as surely as do the characters. It is a film built to a specific ending, but one that the audience will be hard pressed to care about. Why should you care about two characters, or even four or six, who are as deep as a papercut and as compelling as watching paint dry?

Two Women is now available on all digital platforms.