Women Talking

[VoR]

The somewhat surprising Best Picture nominee from Sarah Polley.



I liked this a fair bit more than I was expecting to. In fact I found it to be quite excellent. For all that it really was just a group of women (and Ben Whishaw) sitting around talking for the most part, it was actually very engaging and didn't feel nearly as stagey as, for example, The Whale.

I liked how there was no one central character, and everybody had a distinct point of view. Of the famous three - not counting Frances McDormand who's barely in it - Claire Foy has the most striking role but even Jessie Buckley didn't annoy me for once. But I think the lesser known character actors like Judith Ivey and Sheila McCarthy were given just as much opportunity to shine.

There were moments when it did feel a little on the nose with these very repressed and barely educated women discussing nuanced gender politics in language that felt more like a debate you'd read on Twitter (albiet less toxic) and the trans character definitely felt a little shoehorned, but those are minor quibbles. One of my favourites of this Oscar season for sure.

 

[Generic Account]

So good.

 

[VoR]

I KNEW Ellie would hate this!

 

[Ellie]

Why did they all talk like Shakespearean scholars when they were supposed to be so sheltered and uneducated? The WHOLE film was just them saying “Should We Stay Or Should We Go?” and never really progressed from there. I swear they had the exact same conversation about four times on a loop.

 

[Ellie]

I can’t be arsed typing, but this would have been my review:

A ★ review of Women Talking (2022)

really unfortunate :/ i fully, unequivocally agree with the underlying message here. there were some beautiful and effective moments. but not for a single second was i ever even slightly convinced that these conversations were being had by women from an insanely ultra-conservative primitivist...

boxd.it

 

[VoR]

I take some of that review’s points, but it’s a film not a documentary. It even describes itself at the beginning as ‘an act of female imagination’. A movie that was true to how inarticulate and uneducated the women would likely be in reality would probably be a very hard slog.

Also RE the complaint that it didn’t make the sexual violence and child rape explicit enough, that was clearly a choice. Many lesser directors would have chosen to wallow in the misery and degradation of the women and I’m glad Polley chose not to do that for the most part.

Finally I don’t tend to trust any review that seems so angry about ‘culture wars’ and ‘woke bullshit’.

 

[Ellie]

Why did they always wake up to a POOL of blood between their legs? That's not exactly how it works. I genuinely just thought they were having the same conversation over and over and over. It really could have been a 20 minute short film. It's the shortest of all the BP nominees by some distance and feels the longest (although I have not and won't see Avatar)

 

[jivafox]

Was on the fence about seeing this but will definitely catch it now

 

[Generic Account]

The performances, particularly in the last half hour or so, are just

Ben Whishaw and Claire Foy in that scene just before the closing sequence were heartbreaking.

 

[Generic Account]

It does seem a little bit funny saying so because as a movie it's so centred around the female performances (and they were all good to great), but BW really is the star here. What a talent.

 

[GNL]

A movie that was true to how inarticulate and uneducated the women would likely be in reality would probably be a very hard slog.

Or a Real Housewives franchise.

 

[jivafox]

Or a Real Housewives franchise.