Agnès Varda's "Women Reply: Our Bodies, Our Sex" is a "cine-essay" that attempts to answer the anthropological question "what is a woman?" by showing a wide-variety of unique women in the purest and sometimes most conventional form. For eight minutes, Varda depicts women addressing the audience about how they are more than a role, more than a babymaking unit, and more than meets the eye, most of all. Varda was a filmmaker during the time of the French New Wave, as well as a filmmaker who brought upon the importance of documentary/feminist filmmaking throughout her work in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. "Women Reply" Our Bodies, Our Sex" tries to coherently answer its question by first addressing the fact that women are more than the sum of their breasts, buttocks, and vagina, by showing us them in the purest form. It then shows heavier women, skinnier women, pregnant women, short women, and tall women, providing us with the ideas that all of these women have the potential to make a large difference in modern society as we know it. In 2014, these ideas sound like age-old answers to some of the most redundant questions asked. Looking at this particular short from the perspective of 1975, one sees its true value and artistry thanks to its directness and its willingness to take a stand and answer a very broad, open-ended question, even if the stand and the answer may be worth more than an eight minute short.
NOTE: The film can be viewed on the popular website MUBI, mubi.com/films/women-reply-our-bodies-our-sex
Directed by: Agnès Varda.
