Film Review: "Women Talking" (2022).

"Do Nothing. Stay And Fight. Leave." This is Women Talking. This drama film adapted and directed by Sarah Polley, based on the 2018 novel of the same title by Miriam Toews, and inspired by real-life events that occurred at the Manitoba Colony, a remote and isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia. The women of an isolated religious community grapple with reconciling their reality with their faith. Though the backstory, we see a community of women come together to figure out how they might move forward together to build a better world for themselves and their children. Stay and fight or leave. They will not do nothing.

In December 2020, it was reported that Frances McDormand would star in a film adaptation of Toews's 2018 novel, inspired by real-life events that occurred at the Manitoba Colony in 2010, with Polley penning the adaptation and as director. From 2005 to 2009, nine men in the Manitoba Colony, using livestock tranquilizers, drugged female victims ranging in age from three to sixty and violently raped them at night. When the girls and women awoke bruised and covered in blood, the men of the colony dismissed their reports as "wild female imagination"--even when they became pregnant from the assaults--or punishments from God or by demons for their supposed sins. According to a May 2019 BBC article by Linda Pressly, when the rapists were finally caught, they were arrested by Bolivian authorities. One fled from justice, but the other eight were tried and convicted. Seven were sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for the repeated, multiple rapes, and an eighth was convicted for providing the drug but then released. As of 2019, the elders of the Manitoba Colony were lobbying for the rapists' releases. By late July, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, and Ben Whishaw were cast. At the same time, principal photography commenced and wrapped in early September. Filming took place in Pickering and Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with COVID-19 safety precautions in place. Costume designer Quita Alfred procured some fabric and prayer coverings from an actual Mennonite community store, using differing colors and patterns for each family to represent certain traits they held as a unit. In January 2022, Hildur Guðnadóttir was announced as the film's composer. Polley explained more about the colour grading of the film, explaining how they played with saturation levels to create a feeling of "a world that had faded in the past". This is why the film appears to be almost black-and-white, but not quite.

The film stars Mara, Foy, Buckley, Ivey, Whishaw, and McDormand. The cast as a rape afflicted community achieves the perfect psychological mixture of despair, mystery, rebellion against the male patriarchy that has been their lot in life as Mennonites, and an ultimate odd but eloquent personal liberation.

Polley displays a keen understanding of the sense of confusion and frustration that goes along with being a rape victim, and she handles it well, guiding the film with a warmth, humor, and heart.

Simon says Women Talking receives:

Also, see my review for Stories We Tell.