Demanding answers

Based on real events, Women Talking is a study of revenge, forgiveness and survival after a traumatic and life-changing event.

- MICHELE MANELIS

Don’t let the title fool you. The name of Sarah Polley’s film Women Talking isn’t merely another post #MeToo saga. The film, which is up for a best picture Oscar, is based on monstrous real events that occurred in a remote, ultraconservative Mennonite religious community in the mid-2000s.

More than 100 women and girls were raped in the Manitoba Colony in Bolivia by men who had drugged their victims with animal tranquiliser.

The case inspired Canadian author Miriam Toews, who has based some of her work on her own childhood in a Mennonite colony, to write a novel in reaction.

The book has been adapted by director Sarah Polley in her first feature since 2012’s acclaimed documentary Stories We Tell, about secrets in her own family.

Doing the talking in the dialogue-heavy film is an ensemble that includes Frances McDormand, who is one of the film’s producers, as well as Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, Rooney Mara and Ben Whishaw. And their words have led to Polley’s second Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay, following her nod for 2008’s Alzheimer’s drama Away from Her.

Her film skilfully paints a portrait of a group of women, sitting atop haybales in a dusty barn, for the most part, espousing wildly varying opinions on revenge, forgiveness and survival.

Existential questions are debated as they endure life in an especially oppressive, malignant patriarchy, where violence and rape are a part of life. They wonder whether they should fight back or tolerate the intolerable – all because of their gender. Eventually, they decide to act in the interests of their dignity and take fate into their own hands.