Canadian writer-director Sarah Polley is a former actor, who became frustrated by a string of ordinary roles she found herself paying the rent with.
In 2006 she turned to directing - a brilliant little drama called Away From Her, starring Julie Christie. It took another 6 years to make another, the riveting memoir, Stories We Tell. We’ve had to wait 10 years for Women Talking.
This film has all the hallmarks of a former play, though it comes directly from a 2018 novel by Canadian writer Miriam Toews.
Photo: Screenshot
It mostly takes place in one set – the attic of a barn in an isolated religious community. It takes place around 2010, though it might as well be 1710 – or even earlier.
The women are kept in servitude. They have no education, they can’t read or write, they have no say in their own lives. But life is far worse than that. They are regularly drugged and raped at night – women, old women, even children – by many of the men.
They’re told they’ve been visited by Satan, until one day one of the men is caught.
The culprit rats on the others, who are arrested. But that’s not the end of it for these women, some of whom are now pregnant.
The elders tell the women they have to forgive the men. After all, forgiveness a basic tenet of their faith. And if they can’t forgive, they’ll be shut out of heaven.
At this moment, it becomes hard for me – or indeed anyone not part of such a restrictive faith. Why would anyone accept such strictures? How does one find a way through such a clearly unfair system?
And that’s what Women Talking is about. Nine female members of The Colony have to decide what all of them will do.
There are three options on the table. Do nothing at all – which is what got them into this state in the first place. Stay and fight, which goes against a life-time of acquiescence. Or leave - leave The Colony, and in their faith, turn their back on any hope of salvation.
The story Women Talking is based on is mostly true, we’re told, backed up by centuries of similar ones of course.
But it’s the performances that lift the arguments. The acting is exemplary, even if sometimes the casting is surprising.
Claire Foy – firmly locked into many people’s minds as the young Queen Elizabeth in The Crown series – plays the angriest woman Salome. She doesn’t just want to fight. She’s got murder on her mind.
Jessie Buckley, who you might expect to play the tough cookie of the group, is the most beaten down. Any fight her character Mariche may have had in her has been beaten out of her by her violent husband.
Even more anxious to stay quiet is the older Scarface Janz – Frances McDormand, who also produced the film for Brad Pitt’s company Plan B.
And the one wavering between all three options is Ona, played by Rooney Mara.
The one man in the film is gentle August, the Colony boys’ schoolmaster. He’s been charged with taking notes for the next, literate generation. As played by Ben Wishaw, his position is compromised by his love of Ona. He doesn’t want her to go.
And that’s the film – women talking about difficult subjects, as the temperature rises in the audience at the unfettered power of these men, thinking they can get away with anything.
Which of course they can, because in this case – and for thousands of years in the past – they wrote the rules.
Everyone’s great – especially director and co-writer Polley. But may I put a word in for the one first-timer in this powerhouse cast. Her name’s Kate Hallet, and not only does she play the youngest woman here, but her character Autje is the film’s narrator from start to finish.
