# One Sings, the Other Doesn't
**One Sings, the Other Doesn't** (French: *L'une chante, l'autre pas*) is a 1977 French feminist musical drama written, directed, and produced by [Agnès Varda](https://www.edgepedia.org/agnes-varda), following the fourteen-year friendship of two women, Pauline ("Pomme") and Suzanne, against the backdrop of the women's liberation movement in France from 1962 to 1976.[1](https://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas.shtml) • [2](https://www.cine-dossiers.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CD2022_Lune-chante-lautre-pas.pdf) Varda made the film at her own company, Ciné-Tamaris, after several rejected scripts on contraception and abortion, saying she wanted to be a witness to the struggles of the decade between 1965 and 1975.[3](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2018/one-sings-the-other-doesn-t-agnes-varda-s-feminist-letter/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | *L'une chante, l'autre pas*[1](https://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas.shtml) |
| Director, writer, producer | Agnès Varda[1](https://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas.shtml) |
| Year and countries | 1977; France, Belgium, Venezuela[4](https://www.canalplus.com/cinema/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas/h/11436487_40099/resume-casting/) |
| Lead cast | Valérie Mairesse (Pauline/Pomme), Thérèse Liotard (Suzanne), Robert Dadiès (Jérôme), Ali Raffi (Darius), Jean-Pierre Pellegrin (Dr. Pierre Aubanel)[5](https://mk2films.com/film/one-sings-the-other-doesnt/) • [6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/one-sings-the-other-doesnt) |
| Music | Songs with lyrics by Varda, music by the Orchidée trio; score by François Wertheimer[7](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09639480903037111) • [3](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2018/one-sings-the-other-doesn-t-agnes-varda-s-feminist-letter/) |
| US release | Limited theatrical release September 24, 1977; gross $16.2K[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/one-sings-the-other-doesnt) |
| Reception | 65% on the Tomatometer (49 reviews); 7.4/10 on IMDb[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/one-sings-the-other-doesnt) • [8](https://www.playpilot.com/us/movie/one-sings-the-other-doesnt-pptiq8O/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The film opens in Paris in 1962. Pauline, a seventeen-year-old student from a petit-bourgeois family who sings in a choir and dreams of becoming a singer, meets Suzanne, a twenty-two-year-old mother of two children whose photographer lover has died by suicide and who is pregnant with a third child she cannot support.[2](https://www.cine-dossiers.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CD2022_Lune-chante-lautre-pas.pdf) • [4](https://www.canalplus.com/cinema/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas/h/11436487_40099/resume-casting/) Pauline helps Suzanne find the money for an abortion, at a time when the procedure was illegal in France.[3](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2018/one-sings-the-other-doesn-t-agnes-varda-s-feminist-letter/)
The friends then lose contact and live separate lives. Pauline, who takes the name Pomme, travels to Amsterdam for her own abortion and there writes a song in tribute to the other women at the clinic, discovering her calling as a feminist troubadour.[1](https://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas.shtml) She meets Darius, a young Iranian intellectual, and follows him to Iran to live as a wife and mother; when Darius turns into a "traditional husband" who expects her to prepare dinner, she leaves him and returns to France, where she has a second child and rejoins an itinerant militant singing group.[9](https://catalogue.ina.fr/doc/TV-RADIO/DO_CPD92002190/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas) • [10](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1977/11/14/current-cinema-3) Suzanne, meanwhile, returns to her parents' farm, teaches herself to type, moves to the south of France, and finds her balance between raising her children, working in family planning, and marrying a physician, Pierre Aubanel.[9](https://catalogue.ina.fr/doc/TV-RADIO/DO_CPD92002190/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas) • [10](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1977/11/14/current-cinema-3)
Ten years after their first meeting, the two women reunite at a feminist demonstration and pledge to keep in touch by postcard.[8](https://www.playpilot.com/us/movie/one-sings-the-other-doesnt-pptiq8O/) The film ends in 1976 with the two together again, their children grown, each fulfilled along her own path.[10](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1977/11/14/current-cinema-3)
## Feminist context and songs
Varda situated the film in the concrete politics of its period. In 1971 she had signed the Manifesto of the 343, a declaration by 343 women who had had illegal abortions, at a time when the act could be punished by a prison sentence of up to ten years.[11](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2024/cteq/one-sings-the-other-doesnt/) The law legalizing abortion was voted in France in 1975.[12](https://www.starandshadow.org.uk/id/2622/) Varda herself described the film as being "about the fight for contraception, and for women's sexual and corporal freedom."[12](https://www.starandshadow.org.uk/id/2622/)
**Music carries the politics.** Varda chose to translate militant discourse into a series of playful, joyful songs, with titles such as "Mon corps est à moi" ("My Body Is Mine"), "Papa Engels" (which quotes [Friedrich Engels](https://www.edgepedia.org/friedrich-engels) on sexual politics), and "Ni cocotte ni popote."[13](https://www.riennevadesoi.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Cle%CC%81o-de-5-a%CC%80-7-dAgne%CC%80s-Varda-Enseignant.pdf) • [14](https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/73989/one-sings-the-other-doesnt-criterion-collection/) She wrote the lyrics herself; the Orchidée trio, Micou Papineau, Joëlle Papineau, and Doudou Greffier, wrote the music and performed the songs with the singer François Wertheimer, who also composed the orchestral score and appears as an itinerant musician.[7](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09639480903037111) • [3](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2018/one-sings-the-other-doesn-t-agnes-varda-s-feminist-letter/) The lawyer Gisèle Halimi, a central figure in the abortion debate in France through the Bobigny court case, appears in the film as herself.[12](https://www.starandshadow.org.uk/id/2622/)
## Reception and legacy
When released, the film was very well received in France and was especially supported by women.[3](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2018/one-sings-the-other-doesn-t-agnes-varda-s-feminist-letter/) American critics were divided at the time: [Pauline Kael](https://www.edgepedia.org/pauline-kael), reviewing the film in [The New Yorker](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-new-yorker) in November 1977, found Pomme's lyrics a "grab bag of feminist slogans," while the Los Angeles Times' Charles Champlin called it "a demonstration and never a lecture."[10](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1977/11/14/current-cinema-3) • [6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/one-sings-the-other-doesnt) The Siskel Film Center notes that the film was initially divisive for its sunny, idealized view of female liberation.[15](https://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/one-sings) On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 65% critics score from 49 reviews and a 76% audience score.[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/one-sings-the-other-doesnt)
The film has had a long afterlife. [The Criterion Collection](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-criterion-collection) released it on home video in 2019 with an essay by the critic Amy Taubin, who wrote that Varda had made her subject "the most crucial and vexed issue of the feminist movement, at that time as it is today, a woman's right to control her body."[14](https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/73989/one-sings-the-other-doesnt-criterion-collection/) • [16](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6399-one-sings-the-other-doesn-t-bodies-and-selves) A 2K digital restoration was presented at Cannes as part of a touring retrospective of Varda's work.[17](https://dx35vtwkllhj9.cloudfront.net/curzoncinemas/agnes-varda/essays/ONE_SINGS_THE_OTHER_DOESNT.pdf)
## Availability
In the United States the film streams on [HBO Max](https://www.edgepedia.org/hbo-max) and the Criterion Channel, and can be rented or bought on Amazon Video, the Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home; it is also sold on DVD and Blu-ray.[18](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/one-sings-the-other-doesnt)
## Runtime and production details
Sources disagree on the exact runtime: the mk2 Films catalog lists 120 minutes, the Siskel Film Center 121 minutes, Rotten Tomatoes 1h 45m, and a French film guide 116 minutes.[5](https://mk2films.com/film/one-sings-the-other-doesnt/) • [15](https://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/one-sings) • [6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/one-sings-the-other-doesnt) • [19](https://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/FILMS.pdf) The film was photographed by Charles Van Damme and edited by Joëlle Van Effenterre, and was a co-production involving Ciné-Tamaris, the Société Française de Production, the Institut national de l'audiovisuel, and Contrechamp, dated 1976 in production records.[1](https://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas.shtml) • [9](https://catalogue.ina.fr/doc/TV-RADIO/DO_CPD92002190/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas)
## References
1. [L'UNE CHANTE, L'AUTRE PAS (One Sings, The Other Doesn't), New Wave Film Encyclopedia](https://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas.shtml)
2. [L'UNE CHANTE, L'AUTRE PAS · ANALYSES, Cine-dossiers (2022)](https://www.cine-dossiers.fr/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CD2022_Lune-chante-lautre-pas.pdf)
3. [One Sings The Other Doesn't: Agnès Varda's feminist letter, Festival de Cannes (2018)](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/2018/one-sings-the-other-doesn-t-agnes-varda-s-feminist-letter/)
4. [L'une chante, l'autre pas, CANAL+](https://www.canalplus.com/cinema/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas/h/11436487_40099/resume-casting/)
5. [L'une chante, l'autre pas, mk2 Films](https://mk2films.com/film/one-sings-the-other-doesnt/)
6. [One Sings, the Other Doesn't, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/one-sings-the-other-doesnt)
7. [Confronting Contradictions: Genre Subversion and Feminist Politics in Agnès Varda's L'une chante, l'autre pas, Modern & Contemporary France](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09639480903037111)
8. [One Sings, the Other Doesn't, PlayPilot](https://www.playpilot.com/us/movie/one-sings-the-other-doesnt-pptiq8O/)
9. [L'une chante l'autre pas, catalogue INA](https://catalogue.ina.fr/doc/TV-RADIO/DO_CPD92002190/l-une-chante-l-autre-pas)
10. [Scrambled Eggs, by Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (November 7, 1977)](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1977/11/14/current-cinema-3)
11. [One Sings, the Other Doesn't, Senses of Cinema (2024)](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2024/cteq/one-sings-the-other-doesnt/)
12. [One sings, the other doesn't, Star and Shadow Cinema](https://www.starandshadow.org.uk/id/2622/)
13. [Cléo de 5 à 7 d'Agnès Varda, dossier pédagogique, Cinémathèque](https://www.riennevadesoi.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Cle%CC%81o-de-5-a%CC%80-7-dAgne%CC%80s-Varda-Enseignant.pdf)
14. [One Sings, The Other Doesn't: Criterion Collection review, DVD Talk (2019)](https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/73989/one-sings-the-other-doesnt-criterion-collection/)
15. [One Sings, the Other Doesn't, Gene Siskel Film Center](https://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/one-sings)
16. [One Sings, the Other Doesn't: Bodies and Selves, by Amy Taubin, The Criterion Collection (2019)](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6399-one-sings-the-other-doesn-t-bodies-and-selves)
17. [Gleaning Truths: Agnès Varda Nationwide Touring Programme, Curzon](https://dx35vtwkllhj9.cloudfront.net/curzoncinemas/agnes-varda/essays/ONE_SINGS_THE_OTHER_DOESNT.pdf)
18. [One Sings, the Other Doesn't streaming, JustWatch](https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/one-sings-the-other-doesnt)
19. [L'une chante, l'autre pas, Agnès Varda, France, 1977, film guide](https://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/FILMS.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Musical and music films (individual works) › Musical films of the 1970s and 1980s*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license