Women Talking review: Greg Bruce and Zanna Gillespie review the new film from Sarah Polley

Rooney Mara as Ona in Women Talking.

Greg and Zanna watch a movie in which wrongs are unable to be righted.

SCORES

Women Talking: 5

Men talking: 1

SHE SAW

I suspect the title Women Talking is off-putting to a certain kind of viewer but I’ve seen a lot of movies in my time that could easily have been called Men Talking, and some of those were quite good. Make no mistake, the title of this film isn’t metaphorical or abstract, it’s about as literal as they come. This film is 1 hour and 44 minutes of women talking, mostly in one room, in one barn, and it is riveting.

The film is based on the Miriam Toews book of the same name, which is a fictionalisation of a true story from 2010 about women in a Mennonite community in Bolivia discovering that some men had been using cow tranquiliser to render them unconscious so they could rape them. The film is written and directed by Sarah Polley and follows a small group of women who’ve been selected to decide for all the women of this religious colony whether they remain in the colony, forgive the men and do nothing; stay and fight to protect themselves and their children; or leave en masse.

Over a period of two days, while the men are away at the trial of the convicted attackers, the women break down their options and the consequences of each. They argue, they turn on each other, they comfort and console each other and they eventually reach a consensus. The performances by Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara and others are impeccable and I’m stunned that not one has been nominated for an Academy Award. Another notable omission is Polley in the Best Director category. It’s not the first or even second time that a female director’s film has been nominated for both Best Picture and Best Screenplay - as Women Talking has been - but has been left out of the Best Director category, as if the film made itself. I am quite certain, had this film not been adeptly directed, nearly two hours of women talking in a barn would be unwatchable.

There’s only one male lead - August the school teacher (Ben Whishaw) - who has been invited to take the notes of the meeting. His character’s existence does feel a bit artificial - like an on-the-nose statement in defence of the good guys - but nevertheless, he adds an affecting and important intricacy to their dilemma and Whishaw is wonderful.

I found this movie to be a far more effective piece of cinema in regards to #metoo than last year’s She Said. It synthesised the complexities and conflicts that come up for women in the wake of sexual assault in a way that felt both specific and broadly human, and I was profoundly moved by the final images.

HE SAW

The movie is notable for what it leaves out: men, mostly, but also action. Not only do the women sit around in a barn talking for almost the whole movie, they don’t even move around the barn that much. This is clearly an aesthetic choice and it’s also a direct challenge from the filmmaker. Are you prepared to sit with this?

Zanna asked afterwards if I found it boring, which I took offence at: as if because I’m a man I’m only interested in cage fighting; as if being a man limits the type of thing one might be interested in. It’s tricky territory, because in some cases that’s true. Growing up in traditionally gendered households with a stereotypical working dad and stay-at-home mum, while simultaneously immersed in traditional media representations of gender can, and often does, influence the type of gendered attitudes and gender performance characteristics the child picks up.

The problem is that Hollywood, long dominated by only one gender, has privileged stories representing that gender and the traditional attitudes and values of that gender and thereby firmly entrenched a vision of “interesting” as something with action, tension, explosions and preferably Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

This is now so deeply entrenched that it’s going to take more than one generation of progressive film-making to put it right. And if this progressive movie makes you think we’re in the midst of that generation, think again.

Research into last year’s top-grossing US movies shows that 85 per cent of movies featured more speaking parts for males. Of all the speaking parts in all the movies, only a third belonged to women. Behind the camera, things were worse: Only 17 per cent of the top-grossing movies were directed or written by women.

The most unusual character in Women Talking is August, the only man, a meek and thoughtful schoolteacher who has been brought in to take the minutes because the women are all illiterate. He appears to feel guilt and shame for what has happened to the women, and wants desperately to help, and apologises profusely when they yell at him for overstepping his bounds, which he does rarely, because mostly he just sits and listens. In other words, he comes across like a good and decent man. The fact he seems so unusual speaks volumes - and not just about the movies.

Women Talking is in cinemas now.