Women Talking reduces women to their words, as the title implies, a choice that is bold but limiting. Based on a 2018 novel by Miriam Toews, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Sarah Polley, the film registers as a stage adaptation more than anything else: in the hayloft of a barn, a group of women belonging to an isolated religious community debate whether or not they should leave after the rampant sexual abuse by the men in charge can no longer be denied. Polley (Away From Her, Stories We Tell) occasionally leaves the barn to let the camera wander, Malick-like, alongside the community’s children through verdant fields, but Women Talking mostly consists of circular debates about freedom, forgiveness, sin, obedience, and more. Despite a formidable cast—Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, and Frances McDormand among them—and occasional, excruciating hints at the trauma the women have endured, the movie never comes to life in a visceral, cinematic way. Women Talking mostly registers as a cloistered allegory (one almost as austere as Lars von Trier’s Dogville), standing in for the deliberations women must undertake just to move about in society every day.
(12/17/2022)
