Women Talking (2022)

 Review contains discussion of sexual assult and a minor spoiler.

'Women Talking' is the 4th film directed by Canadian actress Sarah Polley and is based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Miriam Toews, which in turn was inspired by actual events at a Mennonite colony in Bolivia earlier this century. Some young men in The Colony had used cattle tranquilizer to incapacitate women and then rape them. One woman awoke mid-assult and was able to identify her attacker, who in turn reveled the identities of the other men involved.

At the start of the movie most of the men folk have left The Colony to go and bail out the attackers, the Elders telling the women they have 48 hours to forgive the men or risk excommunication. In their abscene the women hold a vote between the three options they feel open to them, do nothing, stay and fight or leave. With no clear winner in the vote three familys, of multiple generations and representing the different options, are selected to meet in a barn and hash out a decision for the colonies women. The women being mostly illiterate a single man, the Colony's school teacher, is allowed to sit in on their meetings and keep notes.

The film consists mostly of discussion among the women, hence the title. This is fraught, high stakes conversation that explores issues of faith, forgiveness, trust, betrayal, security, risk, right, wrong, safty, freedom, matters of deep existential angst and of practical consideration; it is weighty, often gripping stuff. The film reminded me of 'God on Trial', a teleaplay aired on PBS some years ago about Jews in a concentration holding a symbolic trail of God for breaking the covenant, a sense of broken covenant is very much on these womens minds.

The film bosts strong performances across the board from a fine cast including Clair Foy, Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara, Francis McDormand, and Judiath Ivey, Ben Whishaw plays the school teacher. The setting appears to have been transplanted from South America to either the US or Canada, and while the year in which the story is set is given midway through the picture it hardly matters, a placeless, timeless universality is intentionally conveyed.

The parties and their positions seem pretty well deadlocked but when things break in one options favor it happens very quickly. I will not reveal here which option the women choose, but once the decision is made the already high emotional undercurrent kicks into a new level. This is a devistating movie, both reflective and rightly rageful. ****