by Hudson Moura
In Two Women, Chloé Robichaud offers a gently subversive and emotionally intelligent portrait of female desire, intimacy, and self-rediscovery in contemporary Quebec. Set in middle-class Montreal, the film follows two young mothers—each quietly stranded in unfulfilling domestic lives—who decide to reclaim their bodies and their erotic agency.
One woman, newly postpartum, begins to hear voices—echoes of a larger, unmet erotic energy that courses through the city like an unspoken hunger. The other grapples with a partner sinking into depression, while her friend’s husband is busy maintaining a secret affair. Both women are caught in relationships where the emotional and sexual connection has faded, not due to malice but inertia, time, and a mutual failure to grow together.
Rather than descending into melodrama or didacticism, Two Women strikes a careful balance between lightness and provocation. Robichaud handles themes of infidelity, maternal exhaustion, and sexual frustration with empathy and wit, letting her characters explore not only their desires, but the deeper longing for connection and wholeness. “There’s an infinite array of types of rapture between humans,” the film muses, “just waiting for a moment of surrender to carry us away.” And yet, the contradiction between the surrender required by passion and the alert vigilance of motherhood remains at the film’s core.
What emerges is a sharply observed and culturally specific portrait of gendered intimacy in Quebec today—one that reflects a shifting societal landscape without assigning blame or offering easy resolutions. There are no villains here, only people in search of balance, of joy, of themselves.
Two Women is a refreshingly honest exploration of female sexuality and emotional interiority. It vibrates with energy, tenderness, and quiet rebellion—offering a nuanced, unapologetic space for women’s pleasure, absence, and return. 
(4/5)