The #MeToo movement might have become a buzzword to some, but in truth it remains a lived reality for so many. It’s a complex, timeless issue, and some recent films have failed to honour the injustices and forced silences faced by women for decades. Thankfully new drama Women Talking, recently nominated for two Oscars, is a beacon of light leading the conversation.
Adapted by director Sarah Polley from Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel of the same name, the film is loosely based on the real-life events that took place in a Bolivian colony during the mid to late 2000s – which saw many of the women there drugged and raped by the men of the colony. In Women Talking, those affected meet in a hayloft to decide what to do next: leave, stay and fight, or do nothing.
Much of the film simply recounts the conversations these women have – a brave and defiant group led with vigour by Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Rooney Mara – but the specificity of Toews and Polley’s screenplay cuts to the bone. Polley has always been articulate on sexual abuse and misconduct against women and girls, having written about her own difficult experiences as a child actor, and here brings sensitivity and much-needed levity to a harrowing story.
The #MeToo movement might have become a buzzword to some, but in truth it remains a lived reality for so many. It’s a complex, timeless issue, and some recent films have failed to honour the injustices and forced silences faced by women for decades. Thankfully new drama Women Talking, recently nominated for two Oscars, is a beacon of light leading the conversation.
Adapted by director Sarah Polley from Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel of the same name, the film is loosely based on the real-life events that took place in a Bolivian colony during the mid to late 2000s – which saw many of the women there drugged and raped by the men of the colony. In Women Talking, those affected meet in a hayloft to decide what to do next: leave, stay and fight, or do nothing.
Much of the film simply recounts the conversations these women have – a brave and defiant group led with vigour by Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Rooney Mara – but the specificity of Toews and Polley’s screenplay cuts to the bone. Polley has always been articulate on sexual abuse and misconduct against women and girls, having written about her own difficult experiences as a child actor, and here brings sensitivity and much-needed levity to a harrowing story.
Miriam Toews' novel Women Talking is drawn from events that came to light in a Bolivian Mennonite colony in 2009, when a group of men was charged with r*ping more than 100 girls and women in their community...
“Women Talking” is both horrifying and thrilling, infuriating and inspiring—a story of survivors of atrocities giving voice to their experiences and taking action to protect themselves...
Maybe it doesn’t matter that the Oscar-nominated Women Talking won’t win Best Picture, even though it should. Nor, perhaps, does it matter that people will say that this film...
Women Talking is a film about exactly what it says on the tin; women, talking. Bringing together a superb cast of some of the finest women in Hollywood, Sarah Polley has masterfully...
The Canadian writer-director Sarah Polley’s superbly inventive adaptation of Miriam Toews’s 2018 novel begins with a declaration: “What follows is an act of female imagination.”
Filmmaker Sarah Polley has always been a tireless miner of the female headspace, excavating gold out of thoroughly earned feminine wisdom. Relentlessly challenging the rules of a..