Women Talking
Writer-director Sarah Polley creates a poetic feminist tract that is as visually startling as it is dramatically disturbing.
Conversation piece: Judith Ivey and Claire Foy
The women have a lot to talk about. Unable to either write or read, the women are nonetheless expressive in their opinions of whether to stay in their colony and suffer in silence, or to turn on the menfolk they live with, or to flee their community altogether. However, if they cannot find it in their hearts to forgive the sins of their husbands, they may find their path to the kingdom of Heaven blocked. Yet could not God, irrespective of His gender, favour the women’s freedom and safety as the most favourable option? In the words of the pregnant Ona (Rooney Mara), “Surely there must be something worth living for in this life, not only the next?” Who knows? They have a lot to talk about…
It is a brave filmmaker indeed to trust the faces of her actresses to provide the emotional momentum of her film. But then we are talking about actresses of the calibre of Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley, and Sarah Polley is an astonishingly intuitive director. With so little to go on – she adapted Miriam Toews’ novel herself – Polley elected to strip down the action to a single debate within the confines of one attic in a barn. And yet instead of feeling like a filmed play, Women Talking proves to be a hugely immersive and even transformative experience.
Opting for an almost monochromatic palette and a minimalist score, Polley has allowed the drama of the dilemma, and of the performances, to go unchallenged by cheap embellishments. These women – and girls – are members of a Mennonite colony where institutionalised rape and violence has become the norm. The novel was inspired by real events that occurred in a Bolivian commune, while Polley has moved the action to somewhere in the United States and set it in 2010, although you’d never know it. The modern world is merely a notion to these fiercely intelligent women, who are reliant on a man – August (a brilliant, sensitive Ben Whishaw) – to record the meeting’s minutes in longhand. August has benefitted from a university education, but the women talking don’t even have the language to describe their own bodies.
The former child star Sarah Polley, who received an Oscar nomination for her first screenplay, for Away from Her, has rightfully gained a second Academy Award nod for this. But it is her direction, and the bold choices she has made, that distinguishes the film, bringing a stillness to this battlefield of emotional scars. Rightly, she recognises that the human face presents a unique canvas for narrative drama, and has let these wonderful faces tell their story. With such a strong ensemble, it’s hard to single out any one performance, although Claire Foy brings an exceptionally eloquent passion to her scenes – but never at the expense of the other players, who coalesce into a Greek chorus of tragedy, as well as of humour, and of human compassion.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Ben Whishaw, Frances McDormand, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, Kate Hallett, Liv McNeil, August Winter, Kira Guloien, Shayla Brown.
Dir Sarah Polley, Pro Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner and Frances McDormand, Screenplay Sarah Polley, from the book by Miriam Toews, Ph Luc Montpellier, Pro Des Peter Cosco, Ed Christopher Donaldson and Roslyn Kalloo, Music Hildur Guðnadóttir, Costumes Quita Alfred, Dialect coaches Brett Tyne and Kate Wilson.
Orion Pictures/Hear/Say Productions/Plan B Entertainment-Universal Pictures.
104 mins. USA. 2022. US Rel: 23 December 2022. UK Rel: 10 February 2023. Cert. 15.
