Women Talking

WOMEN TALKING (15)

D: Sarah Polley

United Artists / Orion / Plan B / HearSay (Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner & Frances McDormand)

US 🇺🇸 2022

104 mins

Drama

W: Sarah Polley [based on the novel by Miriam Toews]

DP: Luc Montpellier

Ed: Christopher Donaldson & Roslyn Kalloo

Mus: Hildur Gudnadottir 

Rooney Mara (Ona), Claire Foy (Salome), Jessie Buckley (Mariche), Judith Ivey (Agata), Ben Whishaw (August), Frances McDormand (Scarface Janz)

Sarah Polley’s low-key drama, adapted from the novel by Miriam Toews, boasts an impressive, mostly-female cast as a group of women from a religious community who meet to discuss what’s best for their own and their children’s future following the discovery that many of them had been raped by the men in their colony.

The title alone should suggest that this movie is mostly “women talking” and this is pretty much the entire movie, although it’s far more engaging and thought-provoking than discussions alone.

The biggest surprise for me was that this movie was actually set in the relative present day of 2010, when I’d actually believed it to be the 19th century from the marketing poster and trailers… perhaps this was a strategy of both the original author and Sarah Polley to demonstrate that these are not crimes that have been resigned to the past and are still ongoing, many times without punishment.

It’s not going to be an engaging watch for everyone, and certainly wouldn’t be a film you’d subject yourself to multiple viewings of, but it’s certainly one of the most important films of 2022.

7/10