Two Women

Violette asks Florence about the mysterious crow noise because she's searching for any sign of life or excitement in her monotonous routine. The crow's cry represents something out of the ordinary in her otherwise sexless marriage and repetitive days caring for her daughter. When Florence denies it, Violette wonders if she's missing out on something, a moment that plants the seed for her later sexual awakening.

The crow sound initially seems like mere background noise but becomes a symbol of the women's eventual break from their routine lives.

Florence stops taking antidepressants because she wants to feel more alive and adventurous, believing her medication is dampening her emotions and desires. She explicitly tells Violette she wants to become bolder and experience life fully. This decision directly leads to her fling with a handyman and her impulsive behavior at the bar where she cuts her wrist.

Stopping antidepressants sets the stage for Florence's radical transformation and her influence on Violette's choices.

Violette stops breastfeeding as a symbolic act of reclaiming her identity beyond motherhood. Following Florence's lead, she wants to explore her own desires and sexuality rather than continuing to define herself solely through caring for her daughter. This decision marks her first concrete step toward the sexual experiments she undertakes with Florence.

The choice to stop breastfeeding directly enables Violette's sexual awakening and the changes in her marriage.

David secretly takes Florence's antidepressants because he wants to justify his own lack of libido and avoid confronting his failures in the relationship. When he learns about Florence's infidelity, rather than addressing the marriage issues directly, he uses her medication as an excuse, claiming his own reduced desire is chemically induced rather than a choice or emotional disconnect.

David's secret medication use foreshadows his collapse at the hockey game when he mixes alcohol with the drugs.

During a hockey game, David kisses Eli (Benoit's affair partner) and then collapses from mixing alcohol with the antidepressants he's been secretly taking. This dramatic moment forces all the hidden infidelities into the open, the entangled web of affairs among David, Eli, Florence, and Benoit becomes impossible to ignore, triggering the couples to confront their marriages.

The collapse mirrors David's emotional unraveling and sets up the mutual confessions that follow.

Florence tells Violette that monogamy benefits men as a provocative challenge to the conventional marriage structure both women have been trapped in. Having felt sexually neglected and emotionally dismissed in her own marriage, Florence uses this statement to justify her desire for sexual exploration and to encourage Violette to question her own assumptions about fidelity and fulfillment.

This conversation directly inspires Violette to join Florence in pursuing sexual experiments with others.

Violette and Florence engage with tradesmen and a female window cleaner as deliberate acts of reclaiming sexual agency. Both women feel invisible and unfulfilled in their marriages, and these encounters represent their attempt to feel desired and to explore desires they've suppressed. The experiments are framed as a search for connection and empowerment outside their conventional family roles.

These explorations directly lead to the couples' confrontations and the reshaping of their relationships.

Benoit and Violette choose to reconcile after learning of each other's infidelity because they decide the foundation of their relationship is worth fighting for. Unlike Florence and David who separate, they view the crisis as an opportunity to address what was broken and to rebuild their marriage with new honesty. Their ending represents a conscious choice to work through their issues rather than abandon the relationship.

Their decision contrasts with Florence and David's path, showing different outcomes from similar revelations.

Florence and David separate because the revelations about infidelity and David's passive acceptance of it have fundamentally broken their trust. Unlike Violette and Benoit who choose to rebuild, Florence decides she needs independence to continue her journey of self-discovery. Their separation represents the cost of questioning norms, while it leads to personal liberation for Florence, it also means the end of her marriage.

The separation sets the stage for the film's mixed ending where both couples take different paths.

The crow's persistent cry throughout Violette's daily routine symbolizes the monotony and entrapment she feels in her marriage. When she first asks Florence about it, she's grasping for any indication that life exists beyond her responsibilities. The sound threads through her breastfeeding and childcare moments, representing the nagging sense that something is missing, which eventually leads her to follow Florence's path toward sexual awakening.

The crow functions as an early motif for the women's eventual break from their confined lives.