In 1962 Paris, Pauline, a 17-year-old schoolgirl studying for her baccalaureate, wanders into a gallery because she recognizes her old friend Suzanne in one of the photographs displayed.

Pauline, now known as "Pomme" ("Apple"), sings in a feminist folk group and lives with her partner Darius, a grad student she met in Amsterdam when she was herself getting an abortion.

Suzanne has managed to leave her parents' farm by teaching herself typing, and has opened a family planning clinic in Hyères.

[3] The protest where Pomme and Suzanne reconnect was a recreation of a real demonstration in France at the trial of a woman who had had an abortion after being raped.

In the crowd, women carry banners in support of “the 343,” the prominent women—including Varda—who had signed a manifesto testifying that they had had illegal abortions, which was printed in 1971 in the influential left-of-center weekly Le nouvel observateur.

There's a picnic, and kids playing, and wine, and singing (but of too many songs), and what Varda's doing, in a sneaky way, is making her case for feminism in a lyric voice instead of a preachy one.

[6]Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "To describe Varda’s picture as an ardent tribute to the never-not-timely subjects of women’s liberation and solidarity is to risk making it sound awfully schematic.