Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Miram Toews’ novel Women Talking doesn’t name the Christian community in which the titular characters belong. My memory is less clear about whether or not the characters in the film say the specific way in which a few men attacked their women. But as the community chooses a few women to represent them, that few become more explicit on their curiosities, their pain, and their rage. One of the women, Greta (Sheila McCarthy), sometimes digresses from their conversation and talks about her horses but she eventually gets back in track to show a physical side effects of her attacks. Another, Ona (Rooney Mara), has affectionate feelings for the town teacher August (Ben Whishaw) but they can’t marry because the attackers impregnated her.
These women’s main objective then is to decide what to do after the men bailed out the attackers and wants the women to forgive the latter. There’s a vote to either to do nothing, to leave, or to stay and fight. The vote causes a three way tie which leads us to the victims having a forum. In handling this subject matter, Polley chooses compassion, to bring levity to the forum, and to treat this as an intellectual exercise. Abuse is such an omnipresence even in the secular word. As someone with a complex relationship with abuse, I expected this film to cause psychological triggers. It doesn’t at least on my immediate experience because of the way Polley and the actors’ compassionate collaboration.
- Release Date: 9/14/2022
