[For God knows how long, the women of an isolated religious
community have been drugged with cow tranquilizer and raped on a
regular basis during the night. The women had been told they were
being violated by ghosts, demons, or even Satan himself — punishment
for their own improprieties. They believed that lie until two young
girls saw one of the rapists as he left one night. The women of the
colony, have 48 hours to decide what their future will be like. Will
they leave or stay?]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

'WOMEN TALKING’ REVIEW: SARAH POLLEY’S ELECTRIC DRAMA IS AN
URGENT VISION OF HOW TO REMAKE OUR WORLD  
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David Ehrlich
September 3, 2022
IndieWire
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_ For God knows how long, the women of an isolated religious
community have been drugged with cow tranquilizer and raped on a
regular basis during the night. The women had been told they were
being violated by ghosts, demons, or even Satan himself — punishment
for their own improprieties. They believed that lie until two young
girls saw one of the rapists as he left one night. The women of the
colony, have 48 hours to decide what their future will be like. Will
they leave or stay? _

'Women Talking', 'Women Talking' - Poster

 

_EDITOR’S NOTE: THIS REVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT THE
2022 TELLURIDE [[link removed]] FILM
FESTIVAL. UNITED ARTISTS RELEASED THE FILM TO THEATERS LATER IN
DECEMBER.  THE FILM HAS SINCE BEEN NOMINATED FOR THE BEST PICTURE
OSCAR._

For God knows how long, the women of an isolated religious community
(Mennonite in everything but name) have been drugged with cow
tranquilizer and raped on a regular basis during the night. The women
had been told they were being violated by ghosts, demons, or even
Satan himself — punishment for their own improprieties — and they
believed that lie until two young girls saw one of the rapists as he
scurried back to bed across the field one night. Some of the men were
arrested, and the ones who weren’t have gone into the city to
arrange for bail. The women of the colony, unsupervised for a short
period of time, have roughly 48 hours to decide what their future will
be like.

Adapted from Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel of the same name with fierce
intellect, immense force, and a visionary sense of how to remap the
world as we know it along more compassionate (matriarchal)
lines, Sarah Polley [[link removed]]’s
“Women Talking [[link removed]]” never
feels like it’s just 104 minutes of bonneted fundamentalists
chatting in a barn, even though — with a few memorable, and
sometimes very funny exceptions — that’s exactly what it is.
Toews’ book could easily have been made into a play, but every
widescreen frame of Polley’s film will make you glad that it
wasn’t. She infuses this truth-inspired tale with a gripping
multi-generational sweep from the very first line, which puts the
violence in the rear-view mirror and begins the hard work of keeping
it there.

“This story begins before you were born,” the film’s young
narrator (Kate Hallett in the role of Autje) announces, passing these
events down to a specific child while simultaneously framing them in
the terms of a timeless moral fable — one set in an eternal
yesterday that allows for an ever-possible tomorrow, despite the fact
that it also belongs to a specific year in the not-too-distant past.
As the story unfolds, Autje’s voice will ironically also be used in
tandem with the fading sunlight outside the barn to help keep time and
ratchet up the tension of the men’s threatened return. “We had 24
hours to imagine what kind of world you would be born into.”

The “we” she refers to is a voluble and unforgettable quorum
comprising eight people from two different families who’ve been
elected to break the tie in the colony-wide vote as to whether the
women should leave or stay and fight. A third option of forgiving the
men and returning to the status quo is embraced only by the taciturn
and terrified Scarface Janz (producer Frances McDormand, in a symbolic
role with little screen-time), and rejected due to lack of support.

The factions are neither plainly divided nor set in stone. The curious
and ethereal Ona (Rooney Mara) has her head in the clouds, and
discusses their predicament with a philosopher’s abstraction even
though the baby in her belly — a souvenir from one of her unknown
assailants — would seem to be a most concrete reminder of what’s
at stake. Boiling over with impotent rage and consumed by the
helplessness that comes with it, the abrasive Mariche (Jessie Buckley)
provides a natural foil. Ona’s older sister Salome (Claire Foy)
takes that anger to an even greater extreme, and insists that the
women should exercise their divine wrath when the men return. But
should her teenage son, on the cusp of becoming a man himself, be
counted as one of their ranks?

Two elders are on hand to help guide these proceedings, with Ona and
Salome’s mother Agata (Judith Ivey) radiating a sage pacifism and
Mariche’s mother Greta (Sheila McCarthy) cloaking her wisdom in all
manner of comic relief with some help from her horses Ruth and Cheryl.
Hard as it might be to imagine, “Women Talking” is an upbeat and
propulsive film cut with a sharp wit and a ready sense of humor, even
if its characters are often laughing as hard as they wish they could
cry.

Polley trusts in the implicit horror of a story in which every woman
has been raped by their own brothers and fathers — including young
Autje and her friend Neitje (Liv McNeil) — and never  chooses to
dwell on it more than circumstances allow, as even the most deserved
morsel of self-pity is a luxury these women can’t afford at the
moment. Their grief is so seamlessly enmeshed into their fear, fury,
love, and hope that each reaction shot and camera move feels like a
potential revelation. As one character says of the group’s first
meeting: “It’s doomsday and a call to prayer. It’s both.”

The level of acting that makes that possible — that invites a
biblically awesome degree of immensity into every close-up, and allows
long dialogue scenes to unfold with the excitement and dexterousness
of a pulse-pounding action movie — is so off-the-charts incredible
that I’m tempted to ignore it altogether. Mara is rich and
self-assured and full of surprises as an unexpectedly clear-eyed
dreamer, while Buckley chips away at her character’s defensive
callousness with such controlled precision that you can feel the exact
moment she hits bone. Foy has the most animated role, and therefore
also the most show-stopping moments, but the way she ratchets up the
“You’re all a bunch of _boys_!
[[link removed]]” energy she brought to
“First Man” is a sight to behold.

Ivey and McCarthy are ultimately the most valuable members of
Polley’s ensemble cast, as they provide the movie its guiding spirit
when all hope seems lost, but even the men are excellent. Ben Whishaw
occasionally seems just the slightest touch over-affected as the
bullied school teacher with a tragic backstory who sticks around to
record the minutes of the women’s meeting, but his spirit is broken
for good reason, and the too-tender-to-touch romance his character
shares with Ona explains his simpering manner as a self-defense
mechanism of its own.

Non-binary actor August Winter also shines in the role of
Nettie/Melvin, the resident daycare leader whose recent transition
across the colony’s gender line speaks to urgent questions about who
the women should take with them if they decide to leave. What, in the
minds of these religiously indoctrinated people — who until just a
few days ago believed they were being raped by demons — defines a
man? At what age do boys like Salome’s own son lose their innocence,
and, perhaps even more pressingly, at what age does it become too
late for them to relearn it?

Each knotted question unravels into another, as the women debate the
difference between leaving and fleeing; between fear of the unknown
and hatred of the familiar. The conclusions they reach are of vital
importance, but Polley’s film is so extraordinary because of how it
animates the process by which these characters think them through.
It’s the thinking itself that sets them free, and paves the way for
what the film’s opening text describes as “an act of female
imagination.”

That act of imagination might have been even more galvanizing to
witness had it not been muddied behind such musty and rotten digital
cinematography. Polley and her usually excellent DP Luc Montpellier
(“Take this Waltz”) have desaturated “Women Talking” in a way
that suffocates its images in an artificial bleakness the movie
otherwise avoids, sours the inner light so many of its shots exude,
and sometimes make this beautiful movie a real eyesore to look at.
It’s easy to appreciate why Polley and Montpellier were drawn to the
look of Larry Towell’s black-and-white photography for inspiration,
but the compromise they reach between lifelike color and monochrome
desperately left me wishing that they had chosen one or the other.

But a film this focused on imagination can only be tarnished by the
color palette of what we actually get to see, and “Women Talking”
is such a visceral and commanding ode to the stories we tell ourselves
— and the stories that women share with each other — that it’s
destined to be more alive in our memories than it ever was before our
eyes. Like dragonflies that migrate across such epic lengths that only
their grandchildren survive to get where they’re going (cue
Buckley’s Mariche rolling her eyes right out of her head),
Polley’s film is playing the long game. It’s scouring deep within
itself and along the horizon in search of the strength to envision a
better tomorrow — one more dependent on compassion than a unilateral
power that needs subjects over which it can prove itself. “Women
Talking” believes that it’s out there, and that its characters
might just be able to find it even if they don’t have a map. Even if
they have to make their own map.\

* Film
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* Film Review
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* 'Women Talking'
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* Sarah Polley
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* Oscar Nominee for Best Picture
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* Sexual Violence
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* Rape
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