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This topical ensemble drama didn’t get a lot of love at the US box office but filmmaker Sarah Polley must have taken solace from the Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. As in Miriam Toews’ acclaimed 2018 novel, her film is set in an unnamed religious community in North America, where a group of women and young girls have experienced a political awakening.
For years, they had woken up confused and bloodied in their beds, only to be told by the male elders that they experienced Satanic visions.
After a string of mysterious pregnancies, STDs and the capture of two prowlers, they realise they have been systematically drugged and raped.
Inspired by a real incident in a Mennonite community in Bolivia in the 2000s, Toews’ plot plays like a #MeToo parable about women abused by powerful men.
But thanks to Nicola Sturgeon’s recent foray into the trans debate, it arrives in the UK with another subtext.
After the rape victims discover the truth, they almost lynch their attackers. This spurs the elders to take the rapists to the nearest police station for their own protection.
As the women gather in a barn to debate whether to stay and fight their oppressors or leave to start their own colony, their discussions chime with the newly controversial topic of women-only spaces.
But, for these women, this isn’t a social media debate. As the men leave the colony to post bail money, they order the women to choose between forgiveness or eternal damnation. With the men due to return the next day, the women know their lives and those of their young daughters hang in the balance.
As they have been denied access to education, Ben Whishaw’s enlightened school teacher takes the minutes.
Salome (Claire Foy) and Marchice (Jessie Buckley) can barely contain their fury, Ona (Rooney Mara) and Agata (Judith Ivey) are more measured, while Janz (Frances McDormand) is firmly wedded to the status quo.
It can feel stagey but the debates about biological sex, violence and education are fascinating.
It’s a film fired by its language and righteous anger.
- Women Talking, Cert 15, In cinemas now
