March 13 – 16

7:00 pm Nightly
Matinee Thurs Mar 16 @ 1:30
Rated PG — 1 hr 45 min
Drama

Globe and Mail March 13, 2023:
Oscars 2023: Sarah Polley wins best adapted screenplay for ‘Women Talking’
 Toronto-raised filmmaker Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking” has won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. It’s the first career Oscar for Polley, whose film is also nominated for best picture.

Sarah Polley adapts Miriam Toews’s novel into a timely political parable with a stellar ensemble cast. Women Talking is both horrifying and thrilling, infuriating and inspiring—a story of survivors of atrocities giving voice to their experiences and taking action to protect themselves.

The real-life facts are beyond horrifying. Between 2005 and 2009, 150 women and young girls were drugged and then raped by men in their secluded Mennonite community in Bolivia. The women would wake up having no idea what happened, but seeing blood on their sheets and legs, or noticing their underwear was missing. The age range of the victims spanned from 5 to 65.

Women Talking compels you to think about their plight, but it also invites you to enjoy their company. Sarah Polley’s sober, sombre ensemble picture stars Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Frances McDormand, among others, as traumatised female members of a remote, patriarchal religious colony, and it’s a heartfelt new engagement with the #MeToo debate, reminding us that the world of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale really does exist more literally than you think.

The film imagines a situation where the women are left all alone on their farmstead to discuss what has happened while the menfolk (apparently nearly all of them) have gone to the nearest town to post bail. They decide to take a vote on three options: do nothing at all, stay and fight or flee the community.

Polley captures every nuance on her actors’ faces, letting the performances wash over you within the beauty of each frame. Easy to see how the film got Oscar nominations for Best Picture & Adapted Screenplay.

Women Talking March 13-16
7 pm nightly
Thursday March 16 matinee 1:30