Women Talking opens in limited theaters on Dec. 2 before going into wide release on Dec. 23.
To say that a film feels like a Twitter thread is rarely a good thing — see also: the middling Harvey Weinstein exposé movie She Said — but Sarah Polley’s Women Talking makes a meal out of the concept. Based loosely on Miriam Toews’ eponymous novel, it takes aim at patriarchal structures, and the ensuing philosophical gridlocks emerging from a society where sexual assault is all too common, and women have finally begun to speak out. The story unfolds in an isolated Christian commune, where a series of attacks have forced its oppressed female population to gather, vote, and debate on how best to proceed — whether to forgive their rapists as their faith dictates, to stay and fight to create a better culture, or to up and leave entirely — but the film’s non-stop dialogue avoids straying too far towards the didactic. This is owed, in large part, to Polley probing at what lies beneath every facet of this ongoing conversation, which can manifest in the public sphere in reductive ways, whether through new media or more traditional streams. Women Talking tries to pick up the broken pieces of those debates and put them back together. While its theatrical staging does occasionally give way to an inorganic ebb and flow (alongside some awkward shifts in tone when the film attempts levity), it’s hard not to be taken in by its incredible ensemble, who deliver stellar performances across the board.
Its opening text reads, “What follows is an act of female imagination,” though its most imaginative qualities are all in its staging and dramaturgy. The story itself is rooted in the painful reality of a Menonite community in Bolivia, the Manitoba Colony, whose real-life case Toews adapted for her novel set in Ukraine (Toews herself grew up in a Menonite town in Manitoba, Canada, which she left when she was 18). Polley further transposes the film to the United States, where the timeline isn’t fully clear at first — the simple costumes and rural production design make this commune feel stuck in time, and out of time; both trapped in the past, yet timeless and prescient — but a few references begin to slowly clue us in on the “when” of it all. The text’s westward cultural translation speaks to the story’s theatrical nature; it feels distinctly like a blackbox stage play, unfolding mostly in a barn in secret, via spoken dialogue first and foremost. It’s the kind of under-the-radar tale that would benefit from being localized, given how it lives in the delicate space between broad generalities, with regards to gender, and specificities of time, place, and language — or lack thereof, where the latter is concerned. As one of the film’s illiterate victims describes, she was taught little about her own body, and what could be done to it.
However, despite its theatricality, Women Talking discovers its most affecting moments when it briefly cuts away from the barn, to flashes of memory. These interludes illustrate what the women inside are actually discussing, resulting in distinctly cinematic depictions of the emotions underscoring their words (whether the brutality wrought upon them, or their more abstract hopes and dreams for their children in the future). After the colony’s women vote in secret — with “X”s marked alongside illustrations, since they can neither read nor write — they arrive at a deadlock between fleeing and fighting. And so, under the guidance of a minor character played by Frances McDormand, the women from two specific families are chosen to hash things out, and come to a collective decision.
The kindly elders of each family, Agata (Judith Ivey) and Greta (Sheila McCarthy), conceal their burdens with accepting smiles, but they harbor wry wisdom too. Agata has two daughters: Ona (Rooney Mara), who’s pregnant from her assault and who thoughtfully considers each option, and Salome (Claire Foy), whose youngest daughter was raped, and who harbors an unquenchable fury; she’s determined to stay and fight, though what that truly means is something the women still need to decide on. Rounding out the leading trio is Greta’s daughter, Mariche (Jessie Buckley), whose abusive marriage has convinced her that leaving is the best (and only) option. Mariche and Salome are at constant loggerheads, and their understandable hair-triggers result in frequent explosions amid the debate.
The lulls between their skirmishes, however, see the dramatic baton passed to a rich array of supporting characters. Not only Agata and Greta, but Greta’s niece Mejal (Michelle McLeod) — who quietly considers the conversation from a corner, as she dulls her resurgent traumas by smoking — and the film’s two teenagers, Salome’s niece Neitje (Liv McNeil) and Mariche’s daughter, Autje (Kate Hallett). Rather than following Salome and Mariche’s adversarial lead, they’re best friends who quickly grow tired of the process. However, their performances are so finely tuned that the two teens never blend together, despite having to share almost the entirety of their limited screen time; as the debate intensifies, McNeil grows more quietly disaffected, while Hallett begins to slowly crack and crumble.
Rounding off the main cast is Ben Whishaw as the sensitive schoolteacher August, who’s in love with Ona, and whose function is to take the minutes of the meeting. He’s also asked for his input on occasion; his mother was once excommunicated from the commune for challenging their beliefs, so the way he was raised makes him willing to assist the women in ways the colony’s other men may not.
The movie’s desaturated palette stands out right from its opening frames, and while Polley and cinematographer Luc Montpellier don’t play with light and color much beyond this, it sets the stage for the unfurling of a particularly bleak story. The unusually wide 2.76:1 aspect ratio certainly adds to the stage-like quality, but it also helps frame multiple women and multiple perspectives unfolding alongside each other simultaneously, as opinions and tempers fly, and the debate about leaving versus staying deepens to the point that several characters end up 180’ing entirely. Ona is frequently the catalyst for these changes; where Mariche and Salome rage at one another (and at practically everyone else), Ona’s pregnancy keeps her keenly aware of the future and its fragility, so she asks pragmatic questions about where exactly each path might lead the women, should they either stay or leave.
The subject of forgiveness is also broached, both as a religious concept as well as one with a collective social function. But these intellectual musings, while no doubt engaging, are eventually set aside in favor of its emotional strengths. The film, though it features few male characters beyond August — and a trans man in the community (August Winter), who was also raped and impregnated — harbors a constant awareness of the ways in which men and boys play into this dynamic, especially when the topic of leaving is considered more seriously. Which of their sons would the women bring with them? What’s the cutoff age? And are the women even equipped to teach their sons, and help them unlearn cruelty? Of the numerous cutaways to disjointed flashbacks, the images concerned with these questions are perhaps the film’s most moving. The women ask August his thoughts on his young male students; he answers in words, elucidating ideas about kindness and curiosity, but Polley matches his statements to both images of innocent, boyhood frolic, and of the haunting loneliness and emotional isolation imposed upon the boys. Even as children who don’t play a major role in the story, the boys’ diverging paths —should they stay or leave — are laid out clearly through poetic, abstract implications. Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir ties a neat bow on this sequence with some of her most moving film music to date. One moment in particular stands out, where held strings accompany a fleeting closeup of a tween boy staring right down the lens, causing time itself to stand still as his future hangs in the balance.
While not quite as polished as Todd Field’s Tár, Women Talking pairs surprisingly well with it, as an extrapolation of power dynamics (“Don’t we all want some sort of power?” Mejal asks at one point, to which Ona responds: “I think so, but I’m not sure”). But rather than exploring the way power hurts the powerless, the film instead lingers alongside that hurt, long after it has taken hold, as the women figure out ways to escape its dulling grasp. But where the movie ultimately succeeds is not just in its cinematic presentation of ongoing debates on power and gender, or even the rhythms with which each blistering performance is crafted (kudos to editors Christopher Donaldson and Roslyn Kalloo). Rather, its key success lies in its ability to follow the ripple effects of these conversations along distinctly emotional trajectories, tracing each implication as it arrives at some new hurdle to be painstakingly jumped, even at the point of exhaustion. It’s about what could, or should, come after the yelling, the screaming, and the desperate venting — which is to say, the difficult task of healing and rebuilding.
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