Women Talking
Photo: United Artists Releasing

Women Talking Review: A Very Long, Long Conversation

For better and worse, writer-director Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Women Talking is most noteworthy for its imagery.

Sarah Polley’s Women Talking is most noteworthy for its imagery. In bringing Miriam Toews’s 2018 novel to the screen, Polley and cinematographer Luc Montpellier saturate the film in a grayed-out color scheme that mostly denies us any sense of warmth or light. But such a deliberately ugly aesthetic might have been less distracting had it been in service of a compelling story or richly multidimensional characters to either justify or overpower it.

Toews’s novel chronicles an extended argument among eight women in a Mennonite colony as they decide how to proceed upon discovering an appalling deception: that, instead of demons or so-called “wild female imagination,” nine men had repeatedly drugged and raped the women and girls in the community for years before one of the men was caught in the act. Though there’s an element of suspense in the novel—the women are deciding a community’s fate as the threat of the abusive men returning to town after being freed on bail hangs over them—Women Talking is basically philosophical in nature, with questions about the essence of religious faith clashing with more worldly desires for traumatic healing and sexual empowerment.

To Polly’s credit, her screenplay doesn’t attempt to dumb down Toews’s material or artificially open it up, as the film is also set entirely in one location, and to effectively claustrophobic effect. As suggested by the title, much of the drama revolves around the eight women arguing, verbally circling each other, broadly philosophizing, or getting intimately personal while considering their larger cause of a whole village’s safety and fulfillment. The approach is unabashedly intellectual, with sparks of irreverent humor—one character chain-smoking; one of the elders telling an extended anecdote about two of her horses, Ruth and Cheryl; and one imploring another to “shut their pie holes”—leavening what might have been a dryly academic experience.

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And yet, Polley’s integrity isn’t enough to disguise the fundamental obviousness of the presentation. Women Talking is very much keyed to our #MeToo moment, and the various positions the women take could be said to line up neatly with equivalent stances within that particular movement. Salome (Claire Foy)—whose daughter discovered the men’s abuses, and whose attack on one of them with a scythe led police to take the men into custody—is the most fiercely radical of the group, with the acerbic Mariche (Jessie Buckley) not too far behind. Elsewhere, Ona (Rooney Mara) offers a stark contrast with her comparably idealistic, head-in-the-clouds demeanor in advocating for a more nuanced stance. Women Talking also features a mostly mute nonbinary character, Melvin (August Winter), and a soft-spoken male ally, August (Ben Whishaw)—who takes the minutes of the meeting—almost as if to cover all the social bases.

Rarely does Women Talking dare to challenge our assumptions about, say, the necessity of a matriarchal society over a patriarchal one. Instead, it takes such notions as a given, to flatter its target audience’s progressive bona fides. Richer characterizations might have given the film at least an appearance of engaging in a genuine dialectic regarding difficult notions about how to remake an oppressive society. But these characters, however energetically and colorfully inhabited by its cast, come off merely as glorified thesis positions.

Which brings us back to the film’s washed-out color scheme. In choosing such a style, the filmmakers may have thought they were freeing us of any aesthetic distractions, thus allowing us to focus on the substance of the dialogue. But once you grasp the substance of the film early on, there isn’t much else left to discover about these characters or their situations. Without the intellectual rigor to match, Women Talking feels like a long, long conversation indeed.

Score: 
 Cast: Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Frances McDormand, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mitchell, Kate Hallett, August Winter  Director: Sarah Polley  Screenwriter: Sarah Polley  Distributor: United Artists Releasing  Running Time: 104 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2022  Buy: Video

Kenji Fujishima

Kenji Fujishima is a film and theater critic, general arts enthusiast, and constant seeker of the sublime. His writing has also appeared in TheaterMania and In Review Online.

1 Comment

  1. Hi Kenji,
    I can see how someone who hasn’t lived in the shoes of a sexually abused female from the time she was a child would have many blind spots in relation to this truly important piece of art, and thats ok. How could you possibly begin to understand. This movie speaks to every community when it comes to oppression and our patriarchal society in a brilliant way. I was born in a middle class family, mother a teacher father worked in labour relations. I was sexually abused by three men between the age of 5-11;My uncle, doctor and father. I have felt alone and so much shame my whole life, and when I finally spoke my truth at 55 years old I was cast out of my family. The drabness of colour is how we as victims feel, the claustrophobic effect and no way out is how we victims feel. It was meant to put you in our literal shoes as best as possible, to educated you and for you to show up and see what some men have been doing, getting away with, and still do to women in every community then and now. It was very triggering for me, I cried through the entire movie, but didn’t feel alone, i felt heard and understood. Their dialogue was perfect and all thoughts that i have had; it is a wonderful road map for victims of abuse. A road map that in the end of so much careful and vital thought processes arrives at the only choice; to leave their abusers. The only choice to truly process and heal from the trauma which leads to inner freedom and liberation. Their future outer challenges and where they ended up etc were completely irrelevant; its all about conquering the inner demons. They as multigenerational victims finally stood together as one with all their valid viewpoints and came up with the best solution. I was left envious that they had each other while most of us suffer alone making it so hard to leave and restart our lives in every sense of the word; as they said even who we are as a person. Every single word spoke to me and was very cathartic and healing. I hope that this helps you to understand the importance and brilliance of this movie that i am forever grateful for. Many blessing to you Kenji and much love.

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