So much life is looked at in ["One Sings, the Other Doesn't"] that it has a certain old-fashioned and well-furnished vastness, like that of a family saga. It is, however, an extended family of women friends and children. Men are not excluded and they are not unimportant, but they are peripheral to the action. And this is neither inaccurate nor unfair. How many of our fathers have actively been there? (p. 26)

There is a spareness and lightness to Varda's decisions about her images which keep the melodrama contained to particular moments, balanced by dailiness and irony. She narrates the story herself in a quiet, editorial voice, and this makes it possible to read the film with a certain distance, to perceive Varda's captions, to see it as a work of imaginative criticism rather than pure fiction.

"One Sings, the Other Doesn't" is also a very clear and valuable...