Movie Review: WOMEN TALKING

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: December 23rd, 2022 / 04:01 PM

WOMEN TALKING movieposter | ©2022 MGM/United Artists/Orion

Rating: PG-13
Stars: Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, August Winter, Michelle McLeod, Kate Hallett, Liv McNeil, Kira Guloien, Shayla Brown
Writer: Sarah Polley, based on the book by Miriam Toews
Director: Sarah Polley
Distributor: MGM/United Artists/Orion
Release Date: December 23, 2022

WOMEN TALKING feels like it is based on an actual incident. It is instead based on Miriam Toews’s 2018 novel of the same name, although the book is inspired by real-world events.

Narrated by a young woman talking to her own child, WOMEN TALKING begins with the words, “The story ends before you were born.” We gradually learn that it’s 2010, and we’re in a religious community (unnamed in the film, Mennonite in the novel).

Women and young girls in the community have been drugged, beaten, and raped – many left pregnant – by some of the men. After years of the culprits trying to blame all of this on female hysteria, Satan, and other such causes, one of the men has been caught, and named others.

The police have been called to take the men away – not to punish them, but to save them from the fury of the women who have been assaulted (and whose children have likewise been violated).

The male elders of the community have given the women an ultimatum: they have two days to either forgive the rapists, or they must leave the community and, presumably, their hope of getting into Heaven.

The women of the community can’t read or write, and this decision is the first time they’ve voted on anything. The choices are stay and do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. Since it seems a tie between staying and fighting or leaving, it’s determined that the ultimate decision will be made by leaders among the women.

Most of WOMEN TALKING takes place in the community barn, where respected seniors Agata (Judith Ivey) and Greta (Sheila McCarthy) and younger women Ona (Rooney Mara), Salome (Claire Foy), Mariche (Jessie Buckley), and Mejal (Michelle McLeod) debate the pros and cons of either course. An elder in favor of leaving things as they are, Janz (Frances McDormand, one of the film’s producers), departs swiftly. The lone man present is college-educated August (Ben Whishaw), who is there to write down the minutes of the meeting. Unlike his brethren in the community, he is very sympathetic to the women’s concerns.

Director/screenwriter Sarah Polley intersperses the discussion with flashbacks, and flashes sideways and forwards. However, these are mostly of work and play in the community fields; the assaults are covered in the dialogue, not in action or imagery.

Indeed, WOMEN TALKING treads the high wire between the most heartfelt emotion and the headiest philosophy. No one is concerned with what their lives will be like in the outer world, or even what the outer world may be like (only August has ever experienced it). The women want to be sure that they take the course that allows them to remain themselves, true to their faith of nonviolence. If they stay, might the men (who, whether or not they have strayed, are also part of the faith) return to violence? Might the women themselves have to resort to violence, and thus violate their faith? There are also fears about personal safety and safety for children, but even these come in second to spiritual matters.

A different filmmaker might have covered all this in a single scene, but Polley wants everyone to have their say and gives words, ideas, and emotions room to breathe. At times, the performances seem almost Shakespearean in their rage, despair, hope, and articulation. Each member of the cast shines, with Ivey and McCarthy as veritable spotlights, and Foy has a moment of absolute ferocity.

WOMEN TALKING is an immersive experience. At the start, we seem to be looking at a culture that is unfamiliar to us, but by the end, what’s at stake seems urgent to us all.

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