Starring: Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Frances McDormand, August Winter, Ben Whishaw
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Runtime: 104 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2023
Reviewer: Jan Epstein
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Three generations of women experience sexual abuse in their reclusive religious community and meet to decide what they must do: stary, stay and fight, leave.
Written and directed by Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley, Women Talking is a complex film based on Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel of the same name. On the surface, it is straightforward. Set in Canada, a group of women in an isolated Mennonite community gather to determine what is to be done, if anything, about the doping and sexual abuse of young girls and women by their predatory husbands and fathers.
When most of the men leave the colony for two days to support those arrested for their crimes, a plebiscite is taken by the women to determine three things: whether to stay in the community and accept their lot, remain and fight, or leave for a better life.
When the vote is tied, a group of 11 women elect to meet in a hayloft to decide what action should be taken before the men return. None of the women in the colony are literate, and the minutes of their discussions are taken down by the sole sympathetic male who remains to attend to the women’s needs.
Discussion is prolonged and intense, interrupted constantly by events and widely divergent thinking about what is best for them and what God wants and expects. But a decision is made finally which results in a triumphant, liberating action that is both surprising, and not so.
Women Talking is exactly that: a talkfest about misogyny and female slavery in the past and the here-and-now. Inspired as the novel was by events in a Mennonite community in Bolivia in 2010, it is difficult to believe at first that we are not watching an updated version of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which many of my generation will recall vividly from their schooldays. But in today’s world and in the past, there is nothing atypical or out of the ordinary about the fear and hatred of women.
Writer-director Sarah Polley’s take on Toew’s novel is inspired in many ways. Her well-chosen cast includes Roony Mara as Ona, Claire Foy as Salome, Jessie Buckley as Mariche, Sheila McCarthy as Mariche’s mother Greta, and Judith Ivey as Agata. Frances McDormand (also one of the film’s producers) plays ‘Scarface’ Janz, while Ben Whishaw shines as August, the women’s sole supporter and their proxy secretary. August Winter plays Melvin, a transgender man who is raped then ostracised.
While the narrative of Women Talking is ostensibly simple, it is also visually complex. The intimacy of the barn with its talking heads and faces is spread across the wide screen, and this is enhanced by an on-going, interesting patchwork of images and sounds, from birdsong and the introductory voice-over of a young girl narrating her story, to the film’s powerful denouement, which is dominated again by a melange of faces.
The camerawork of the Canadian cinematographer Luc Montpellier is also spectacular. Montpellier opts for minimalism and uses a potpourri of burnished browns to concentrate the mind on what is being felt and said. Adding similarly to the film’s quirky, off-beat character is the soundtrack written by the Icelandic composer, Hildur Guonadottir.
Not everyone will enjoy the differences that distinguish Polley’s Women Talking from more conventionally made films. But as the subject suggests, the world is changing in much the same way as to many, it remains the same.
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