“Being a liberated woman, you know, it’s not that easy,” sang Cookie Dingler, in a hit from the slightly corny French band, in the mid-1980s. And today, can a woman be completely free? ?
This is the question posed by Catherine Léger’s play, Deux femmes en or, a reinterpretation of the erotic comedy produced in 1970. And which remains to this day one of the greatest successes in the history of Quebec cinema.
Half a century later, Léger has made a “free and contemporary” adaptation of it, which can be seen in a sober and effective staging by Philippe Lambert, until May 20, at La Licorne (hurry up, c is already almost complete!). The author of Baby-sitter and Filles en liberté signs here a short and brilliant text. A modern tale, deliciously amoral, in which she ridicules the prudishness and the double standard of our time. To better celebrate eternal feminine desire.
If the play uses the outline of the screenplay by Claude Fournier and Marie-José Raymond, the story is much less explicit than the feature film. But also funny. The action takes place in the era of
The two neighbors no longer live in Brossard, but in an “eco-responsible” suburban community. They read Catherine Dorion’s essay, The Fertile Struggles. And are fascinated by “the infinite panoply of delights” that the ex-politician says she experiences in love.
However, to live in harmony with our romantic desires, we must first free ourselves from our interior prisons, from our golden cages. In this new iteration of Two Golden Women, men are an odd breed; made of cardboard, not gold. The macho husbands of yesteryear have become spouses of variable geometry, full of contradictions. From then on, we understand the desire of abandoned wives to jump the fence…
Of course, the two women will eventually take action. They’ll fuck anything that moves and moves in the home: the exterminator, the cleaner, the pizza guy, the cable guy, the phone guy… And since times have changed, our era is more heteroflexible than in 1970, one of the neighbors will have a flirtation with a woman who has come to deliver a package to her.
The staging, without downtime, offers a wonderful playground for the five performers. In the role of two women in gold and flesh, Sophie Desmarais and Isabelle Brouillette are perfect. Funny without ever being cartoonish, they thrive from scene to scene killing their boredom in bed. Mathieu Quesnel and Steve Laplante, two fabulous actors endowed with an innate sense of comedy, play both the husbands and the multiple lovers of their wives. In the role of the mistress, Charlotte Aubin is perverse and seductive.
Deux femmes en or addresses contemporary issues, without preaching or heaviness. We stay in the register of comedy. With a black background, because we leave the theater with the curious impression that in terms of sexuality, the quest for women’s liberation remains a long and painful road.
In 2023 as in 1970, this world is strong enough for her, but still designed for her.
