Women Talking * * *

Women talking - are they ever!  Director Sarah Polley was once an actor, so I guess that's why she wanted to do some heavily dialogue driven thing like this.  Heck, she even wrote the screenplay!

I went into this film not knowing anything about it so I found myself viewing a weird but intriguing situation.  

After seeing a number of women waking to find themselves violated and bloody we cut to the same women, and others, having a meeting in the hayloft of a barn. By the look of things it's set a hundred years ago or more. But then we notice a few visual clues, such as the person taking minutes is using a modern pen.

Oh what can it mean, to a daydream
believer, and a homecoming queen?

It's through the dialogue of the women that we catch on as to who they are, and what's going on.  They are clearly religious and firmly believe in God, the hereafter etc.  It permeates everything they say. They have been deprived of education and they have been taught they should be subservient to men. 

To remind us this is today a pickup truck drives through the isolated community from time to time, drawing attention to itself by playing a Monkees song at full volume and encouraging all to participate in the upcoming population census. 

As the women's debate continues with bickering, and tears and confessions and suspicions, we catch on.  All the men are absent because half of them are in jail and the other half have gone into town to post bail for their incarcerated brothers.  Someone has found out what the men have been up to.  The law was informed and now the women also know the truth.  

Contrary to what they were told, it is not demons, nor their own evil thoughts, that have given them or their daughters a feeling they were raped in their sleep, it is the men themselves.  Some of the men have been slipping cow tranquilizer into the women's meals and then raping them each night - including the young girls! So much for loving and protecting and following the word of God.

So now the women have to decide what the heck they are going to do about it. The men will be home in a few days.  Do the women forgive and forget? Do they physically fight the men on their return to keep them out of the community, or do they pack up their bags and get the heck out of there, leaving the men to do their own cooking and washing on their return?  And if the men want to do any raping, they'll just have to make do with one another.

The analogy of disempowered mothers in a hopeless situation of domestic violence is obvious and quite moving, especially when considering the plight of the children. 

Apparently is is loosely based on novel, which in itself was loosely based on a true story about a Mennonite colony in Bolivia.  (After all this North American exploitation of their tragedy for our entertainment I hope some benefit flowed back to the original victims.)

I also hope I can get rid of that damnable earworm that stupid Monkees song gave me.