Over a decade since her last feature, actor-turned-filmmaker Sarah Polley returns with a drama that is at once claustrophobic, searing and profound. With only a few credits under her belt as filmmaker — including the tender, aching Take This Waltz (2011) and her semi-autobiographical non-fiction triumph Stories We Tell (2012) — Polley has asserted herself as an astutely observational director, capable of finding deep emotional language in simple premises. Women Talking is an effortless extension of those sensibilities.
Confined to the rafters of a barn for the majority of the film’s near two-hour runtime, Polley guides a formidable ensemble of performers through a taut, relentlessly intense meeting of faith and fury. Adapted by Polley from Miriam Toews’ bestselling novel — in turn inspired by a real-life mid-to-late 2000s case of Mennonite women systematically drugged and raped in their community — there’s not a word of dialogue that isn’t loaded with intent. As much as anything, it’s a fascinating examination of language, the women finding themselves voicing independent thoughts to each other for the first time. In some moments, you can all but see the characters holding the words in their mouths before they speak. In others, the words can’t be stopped from tumbling out.
Polley shows only the aftermath of the rapes, proving outright that the weight of trauma can be seen and felt without showing the violence itself.
Each woman’s experience within the group combines to form a dreadful spectrum of trauma. Rooney Mara’s unmarried Ona is pregnant by one of her attackers. Jessie Buckley’s Mariche has endured violence at the hands of her husband, while Claire Foy’s Salome swings a metal hook at the accused men in an early scene after realising that their assaults stretched to her four-year-old daughter. Polley shows only the aftermath of the rapes, proving outright that the weight of trauma can be seen and felt without showing the violence itself. Scored by rich yet jarring percussion, the scenes show blood contrasting starkly against the film’s otherwise muted palette, aerial shots of limbs stirring in strange positions on beds, and the horror that quickly seizes the womens’ faces and bodies.
Before one of the men is caught escaping one of their homes, the women have been made to believe that their attacks are the work of Satanic apparitions or a product of their imaginations. The film picks up in the immediate aftermath of their communal revelation. While the men are held off-site, the women cast a vote: forgive, leave the community, or stay and fight; all corners of the remaining options are then probed by the film.
And probe it does. Every loaded line from the characters is a statement, a question or a means to divert the conversation onto a new path. Even moments of comic relief feel weaponised, pointedly punctuating the dark and the dour, and showing that the women aren’t defeated. The overall feeling it creates teeters on the precipice of becoming overwhelming. That it never totally suffocates is a credit to Polley’s visible intention to leave no stone unturned and, most of all, to the extraordinary cast — a melange of talent who collectively don’t sound a dud note.
Buckley, who has built a name on her rambunctious screen presence, maintains that crackling energy, but as a woman defeated, whose beatings into submission have left her feeling incapable of independence. Foy brings an unbridled rage to her character, countered and contrasted by Rooney’s eerily placid turn as Ona. The women argue, clashing via their newfound voices; occasionally they fall silent upon the elder women’s commands to all but “calm down”. This may be symbolic of the boundaries still shackling these women, but somewhat stymies the more exhilarating moments.
Still, the film endures as a showcase of Polley’s ability to capture and, for the most part, nurture this fine-tuned balancing act, and sets her off on a new and promising era of her filmmaking career. Women Talking is a rare curio that wrestles hope out of these cruel, intergenerational acts of patriarchal violence. At times it will leave you reeling, as all important films should.
