One sings, the other doesn't

Varda's feminist narrative charts the friendship of two young women, of differing backgrounds and temperaments, over a period of fourteen years as each seeks to take control of her destiny and attain contentment. Pauline, aged 17, helps her friend Suzanne, 22, and the unmarried mother of two children, procure an abortion. Pauline becomes a singer, travels the world and has children by her Iranian lover. Suzanne returns to her parents' farm, educates herself and assumes the directorship of a family planning clinic. The two women meet ten years later at an anti-abortion demonstration and again twelve years after that, having kept in contact during the interim. Varda's film, marking the director's return after a nine-year hiatus from features, takes its theme from a maxim attributed to Simone de Beauvoir: Women are made, not born. (Does not circulate).