WOMEN TALKING*****

Writer-director-actor Sarah Polley returns to our screens with the critically-acclaimed WOMEN TALKING.  It is based on a book by Miriam Toews which is in turn based on the true story of mass sexual assault in a Mennonite community in Bolivia in 2011.  Hundreds of women were gassed into unconsciousness in their own homes and raped.  When they complained to the Elders they were gaslit. Finally they caught a man in the act and had to decide whether to forgive, leave or stay and fight. 

This is the decision portrayed in this film. The men have gone to bail the attackers leaving the women home with the schoolteacher (Ben Whishaw).  They convene a secret vote, and when that is tied, nominate a handful of women to debate the issue and make a decision for them all, with the schoolteacher taking minutes.  The stakes could not be higher - earthly safety from attack versus expulsion from the community and therefore from the kingdom of heaven.

The range of female experience and reaction is circumscribed by the womens' subjugation. They tell us that they barely have the language to articulate what has been done to their bodies. They cannot read or write and do not possess a map with which to leave. Their religious belief and in-grained misogyny complicates their decision. But even within the limited scope of their intellectual freedom there is disagreement. Jessie Buckley's character is married to an abusive husband but sees no possibility of escape, having been told explicitly and implicitly to forgive and endure all her life.  On the other end of the spectrum, Claire Foy's character wants to fight and kill and be avenged. When we learn why she is so particularly angry it is a blow upon a bruise. 

I suspect that how far viewers respond to this film will depend on how far they are willing to accept that it is a "wild act of female imagination".  An opening title card tells us that it is, of necessity, incredible and an on-the-nose allegory of the Me Too movement.  The women are therefore incredibly articulate, despite their lack of formal education, and the dialogue and blocking can come across like a university debate on a theatre stage.  

I was willing to grant the film my suspension of disbelief, and indeed was given no choice in the matter because the power of the subject matter and performances carried me forward into this strange, anachronistic, hermetically-sealed world. It seems wrong to single out a particular player in a very strong ensemble cast, but Sheila McCarthy as Greta had a devastatingly quiet power that cut me off at the knees. 

But the visionary mind here is that of Sarah Polley, which is why it feels so bizarre that this film should be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, but Polley should be overlooked for Best Director. 

It is her vision that centres the film on the female experience, and never shows us one of the attackers, and barely lets Ben Whishaw speak except in response to what the women need. It is Polley who decides to show the attacks in flashback and from above, making us feel the horror without ever being exploitative or pandering to the male gaze. It is Polley who has the confidence to sentence us to "merely" watch women talking - women who have hitherto been forbidden from having a voice, or thoughts, or liberty. It is Polley who creates a vision of a dark, claustrophobic, colour-drained world that feels so anachronistic that even a pop song by The Monkees seems shockingly new. 

The result is a film that feels urgent, and relevant, and shocking but also sadly not so. A film that shows female anger and resignation, and challenges us to ask what kind of world we have created that these women might escape to, and what consequence their male ally will face. 

WOMEN TALKING does what all great films do - it makes us ask questions of ourselves and our society while at the same time impacting us emotionally. I felt deeply invested in the fate of these women, and heartbroken at the choice presented to them.

WOMEN TALKING is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 104 minutes. It played Telluride, Toronto and London 2022. It was released in the USA on December 23rd and in the UK last week.

TAKE THIS WALTZ

This movie made me angry from the opening credits' sepia-tinted focus on Michelle Williams' blue-laquered toenails.  Poor Margot, it seems to say, so quirky, so right-thinking, making muffins with her face scrubbed clean.  It's like a Williamsburg dream. Except it's not.  It's a part of hipster-heaven-imagined Toronto where a young boho-wannabe couple who never seem to do much work can afford to live in a ramshackle-beautiful house interior designed just-so.  The couple are desperately irritating, right up until you realise that they are really really creepy.  They seem to have a kind of asexual buddy relationship where flirtation consists of speaking in infantile voices and drinking milk and poking fingers in your husband's mouth.  Plus the wife is clearly depressed and the husband so engrossed in making chicken cacciatore that he doesn't notice. So she starts flirting with the neighbour who is, of course!, a rickshaw driver who hangs out at the beach each morning to think.  I couldn't make this stuff up. Except he's clearly not as groovy and right-on and at peace with nature as all that because he's soon stalking her at the Y and then she's stalking him, and it all ends in the unsexiest sex-talk over martinis and a confession about nothing.  Still, as unappealing as I found the cocktease wife Margot and her stalkerish fancyman Daniel (Luke Kirby), at least there's a kind of raw honesty and commitment in their performances.  You realise that the first time you see Seth Rogen (the chicken-chef) react to his wife's confession.  Director Sarah Polley decides to do something that should showcase real acting talent - smashcut close-ups of his different reactions. Except, we learn, Rogen can't act - or at least not that kind of raw drama - he seems to be acting "at" it - and does that annoying Brad Pitt thing where you keep groping your face because that looks natural, right?  I mean, let's be clear, we have to blame Sarah Polley for this self-indulgent, risible mess, just as we lauded her for the Alzheimers drama AWAY FROM HER.  She wrote these absurdly incredible characters and their unsexy sexy language.  She exposed Rogen's inadequacies.  And in a montage designed to show Margot tiring of her new man, she reduces her film to an Ikea advert with a teenage-naive-embarrassing cut to what racy sex might actually look like.  Of course, this movie isn't as radical or subversive or raw or authentic as it thinks it is.   Chicken-man's sister turns out to be that movie cliché - the wise alcoholic.  Basically, the meaning is that we always take the weather with us.  And that very few movies live up to the Leonard Cohen song they're using.  Go home.  Go home. There's nothing to see here.    

TAKE THIS WALTZ played Toronto 2011 and Tribeca 2012. It was released earlier this year in Taiwan, the USA (Video on demand), Australia, Canada, Turkey and Sweden. It was released earlier this month in New Zealand, Japan, Denmark, Ireland, the UK, Greece, the Netherlands and Spain. It will be released in Belgium on September 19th; in France on October 31st; and in Brazil on November 9th.

AWAY FROM HER - watching a heart break

AWAY FROM HER is that rare thing - a love story featuring a retired couple - played by Julie Christie and Gordon Pinset. After the first flush of love and middle-aged marital infidelity they have settled into a profound emotional and physical relationship. This is snatched away from them when the wife is diagnosed with Alzheimers disease, enters a residential care facility and in forgetting her husband, falls for another man. Julie Christie gives a brave and touching performance as a women struggling to separate her current life from snatched memories that disturb her. But it is Gordon Pinset who quietly reveals a breaking heart as he watches his wife attach herself to another.

AWAY FROM HER is a beautifully written and acted film, based on a short story by Alice Munro and directed by debutante Canadian, Sarah Polley. I loved the graceful moving camera that slowly weaves its way through a cafe of sufferers and families, or moves through a house. It is a patient interrogator of emotions that are selflessly held back as the couple try to handle this tragedy with a touch of grace. However, the disadvantage of such a deliberately patient shooting style is that the film can seem a little dragging in parts. I also found the frequent inter-cutting between the past, the wife's admission to the care facility and the husband's subsequent friendship with his rival's wife (Olympia Dukakis) un-necessarily complicated. Nonetheless, AWAY FROM HER is an important film, and an acting master-class.

AWAY FROM HER played Toronto 2006 and Sundance, Berlin and Dublin 2007. It opens in the UK this Friday, in France on May 2nd, in Norway and the US on May 4th, in the Netherlands on October 4th and in Spain in November.