If men can have films about having a midlife crisis, then in 2025 it only seems right that women also have films about midlife crises. Two Women follows the titular two women as they navigate dissatisfaction with their home lives and forge a friendship that helps push them toward change. What is supposed to be a film about female empowerment instead seems to rely on shallow comedy and flippant jokes, watering down its message.
Set in Montreal, Violette (Laurence Leboeuf) is a tired mother to a newborn and next-door neighbors with Florence (Karine Gontheir-Hyndman), a similarly tired mother to a ten-year-old. They bond over their nonexistent sex lives, with Violette’s salesman husband always away on “work trips” and Florence’s partner David more interested in running the community greenhouse than sex with his partner. Convinced she is being hounded by a noisy crow, Violette has a handsome exterminator visit, and the two women devise a plan to get some excitement back in their lives. Florence ditches her antidepressants and they both cling to a theory that monogamy isn’t natural as they begin to orchestrate sleeping with any service worker that walks through their door.
The film runs through these encounters with a lighthearted montage. Here’s Violette getting the exterminator to visit again, here’s Florence stepping over the plumber fixing her sink with no underwear on. The scenes are played for laughs, but it feels anything but funny if you imagine the genders are reversed. These encounters are more complicated than that, and these men all consent to the trysts but at its base, these women are inviting workers into their homes and hitting on them, which most people would consider unacceptable if women service workers were being hit on by men. It leaves a sour taste that takes the film from light-hearted fun to increasingly horrific.
Two Women does manage to nail the female gaze. In a film conducted in French and set in Montreal, these service workers are not George Clooney or Henry Cavill. They’re mildly handsome to ordinary-looking men but the camera zooms in on their forearms with rolled sleeves, the way their butts fill out work pants, their hands as they fix something. Small details that catch a woman’s eye more than six-pack abs.
The setting of the film is lush and memorable. Filmed on 35mm, Montreal feels like its own character, whether its the small apartments Violette and Florence reside in, the thick snow blanketing their apartment courtyard, or the city scenes of commuter trains and nighttime skyline. The colors pop and the grain of the film gives everything a lived-in feeling.
Still, their treatment of service workers derails the comedy and neither lead is given enough emotional work to make them likable. By the end, it’s almost easier to feel for their partners, who have little clue what’s happening behind their backs. Based on Claude Fournier’s 1970 comedy Two Women in Gold, the film sets out to be a fun sex romp where two women rediscover their sexuality. In reality, the film feels shallow, more misguided than funny or revelatory.
