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JUSTIN TANNER REVIEWS WOMEN TALKING
With a title like “Women Talking”, one can reasonably assume that at some point during the film, some conversation between females might be on the menu. So I was happily anticipating at least a little feminine chit chat from Sarah (”Away From Her”) Polley’s much anticipated adaptation of Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel. And given the subject matter — rape and religious oppression in an isolated Mennonite community — surely there had to be some meat on these bones or at least an opportunity for energetic discourse about an issue that’s not discussed nearly often enough in the culture.
A better, and certainly more accurate, title might’ve been “Women Talking About Talking” — because that’s what the bulk of the film is taken up with: discussions about HOW to talk about the thing they want to talk about, including a vote about whether or not they should have the talk in the first place. Which all boils down to a single line of dialogue spoken by matriarch Agata (a perfectly capable Judith Ivey): “We must decide now whether we will stay and fight or leave. These are the options in front of us. We will not do nothing.” Fine. There’s a Clash song that deals with the same quandary: “Should I stay or should I go. If I go, there will be trouble. And if I stay it will be double.” And that, folks, all jokes aside, is about the extent of the plot. But if you’re expecting a heated argument based on that premise, you are out of luck, because the bewilderingly passive script is more interested in setting up the game than playing it. It’s like opening a Monopoly board and spending an hour lining up all the houses and hotels, counting the money, organizing the Scottie dog, race car and wheelbarrow and polishing the dice. And then realizing you don’t have enough time to actually play the game. The main problem is the foregone conclusion of the thesis. Spoiler Alert: Hollywood’s not going to make a prestige movie about a group of women who decide to STAY with the men who are drugging them with animal tranquilizers and raping them (including a three year old girl). Michael Haneke (”Funny Games”) might do it, but certainly not Sarah Polley and company.
So, knowing where this is all heading, for “Women Talking” to work there’d better be some reasonable, impassioned, cogent and thought-provoking exchanges on both sides of the equation to justify our time. Instead we get poor Ben “Perfume” Wishaw utterly wasted as a kind-hearted teacher whose main job is to write down a list of “pros” and “cons” of staying or leaving, since the women can’t read or write. But even the lists, such as they are, get barely addressed, with statements of laughable obviousness like “If we stay we won’t have to leave” constituting the level of discourse. Yes, some women are understandably angry at the state of affairs, and both Claire Foy (”The Crown”) and Jessie Buckley (”The Lost Daughter”) get opportunities to posit angrily, which they do with aplomb. But every time the movie starts to build up a head of steam, director Polley cuts away when she needs to dig in and hold. Consequently, we never get pulled inside the quarrel enough to identify with anyone. At one point, early on in the proceedings, when the tension is just starting to ratchet up and it seems as if the talking is about to begin in earnest, Agata suddenly says “Let’s take a break.” And I nearly laughed out loud. Take a break? We haven’t even started!
And the movie continues in this vein: always pulling us out of the barn — and away from the tension of humans fighting for their lives — and suddenly cutting inexplicably to children playing in a field. Additionally, Hildur “Joker” Guðnadóttir’s limpid, draggy score is always dropping in when we least need it, pummeling us with soft wads of folksy guitar and effectively sucking whatever tension has been building right out of the film. Not to mention the cinematography by Luc Montpellier, which casts an inexplicable blue-gray pall over the color scheme, as if the whole film was put through the “Sci-Fi” Video Filter from iMovie. Still, the actors are all fine. And the subject matter couldn’t be more important. And, even as cinematically stillborn as “Women Talking” is, it did bring home, undeniably, the fact that organized religion’s main purpose is to keep women down. I recently watched Mahamat Saleh Haroun’s brilliant and chilling “Lingui (The Sacred Bonds)” which also deals with men using (and hiding behind) religion to oppress and commit acts of horrific violence on women. But where “Women Talking” fumbles the ball, “Lingui” manages (in under 90 minutes) to show us, in surprising and marvelous ways, what “Talking” simply can’t, which is how women use their strongest asset — their ‘sacred bond’ with each other — to undermine and outsmart the men.
Sarah Polley has not so much directed this movie as pieced it together like a quilt. Some individual moments are, at times, arresting, moving and powerful, but they don’t build linearly. The tension, such as it is, is maddeningly allowed to dissipate, the reset button is constantly being hit. And the result is a kind of artless trancelike state where we never know if we’re moving forward or backward. Whatever feud the women appear to be having, no one ever really scores a point. There is no definitive moment when the action makes ‘leaving’ an inevitability. It just happens. “You guys wanna go?” “Sure, why not.” Cue the exodus. IN THEATERS
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Sadly, as it turns out, the title is actually a cheat, since there’s hardly any real debate to be found in the movie’s totally unnecessary (given how little of importance is dealt with) 104 minute running time. 
