The Oscar race officially started after the Telluride Film Festival, which took place early last month. While films like Sam Mendes’ “Empire Of Light” created a lot of buzz, perhaps no film had people talking like Sarah Polley’s upcoming drama, “Women Talking” (read our review). For one, the film is jam-packed with stars who were likely dying to appear in a movie by the Academy Award-nominated Polley, a favorite among filmmakers and actors. “Women Talking” stars two-time Best Actress winner Frances McDormand, Cannes Best Actress winner Rooney Mara (“Nightmare Alley”; “Carol”; “Lion”), as well as Claire Foy (“First Man”), Jessie Buckley (“I’m Thinking of Ending Things”), Ben Wishaw, Judith Ivey, and Sheila McCarthy.
“Women Talking” is set in a fictional Mennonite community in the town of Molotschna. For years the women of the town have been drugged and then raped by what they were told were demons. When they find out that their abusers were, in fact, male colonists armed with animal anesthetic, they take to a hayloft and debate their options: do nothing, fight, or leave.
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The source material for “Women Talking” was the 2018 novel of the same name by Miriam Toews, which itself was based on a series of crimes that occurred from 2005-2009 in the Manitoba Colony of Bolivia. Frances McDormand also served as a producer on the picture, alongside Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, from Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company, each of whom received an Oscar for their hand in “12 Years a Slave” and “Moonlight.”
Hildur Guðnadóttir, known for the “Chernobyl” and “Joker” scores (she won an Academy Award in 2019 for the latter), composed the music for “Women Talking.” The film was shot by Luc Montpellier, who collaborated with Polley on her 2011 dramedy “Take This Waltz” and the 2006 romance “Away from Her,” which was later nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Here’s part of Polley’s official statement on the movie
In Women Talking, a group of women, many of whom disagree on essential things, have a conversation to figure out how they might move forward together to build a better world for themselves and their children. Though the backstory behind the events in Women Talking is violent, the film is not. We never see the violence that the women have experienced. We see only short glimpses of the aftermath. Instead, we watch a community of women come together as they must decide, in a very short space of time, what their collective response will be.
A United Artists release, “Women Talking,” also played at the Toronto International Film Festival and screens at the New York Film Festival this week. “Women Talking” will be in select theaters on December 2, then starts expanding on December 25. Watch the new trailer below:
