Film Pick of the Week: Women Talking - review by Yvette Huddleston

Set in a remote, closed religious community, it focusses on a group of women assembled to make an important decision on behalf of all their sisters after the discovery of incontrovertible evidence that women and girls had been systematically abused – drugged and sexually assaulted while they slept – by their menfolk. Apparently, most of the men were involved in perpetrating this abuse and they have been taken into custody. Others have gone to post bail and while they are all away, the women discuss what has happened and what they should do next. For years when they have tried to alert the elders to the dark deeds in the midst of their community, their cries for help were met with accusations of hysteria. When girls were waking up in the morning with unexplained bruises or bleeding, suffering from terrible nightmares or finding themselves pregnant, it was dismissed as “wild female imagination”.

The women have come up with a basis on which to conduct their discussions and decide that they have three options – do nothing at all, stay and fight or run away. Each of these has its challenges – is it really possible to forgive such terrible acts? What would staying and fighting mean in reality? And by fleeing the community, would they also be turning their back on a God in whom they still have faith? These are thorny issues to debate and Polley’s script gives each of them space to breathe.

Among the women there are varying views. Salome (Claire Foy) whose four-year-old daughter has been violated is, rightly, angry and unwilling to forgive. She is unequivocal, saying she would rather “stand my ground and shoot each man in the heart”, while others like Mariche (Jessie Buckley), Ona (Rooney Mara) and older women Agata (Judith Ivey) and Greta (Sheila McCarthy) have more complex and nuanced thoughts and feelings about how they should proceed. Whatever they choose to do, or not do, they will have been forever changed.

The cast of women are all outstanding, presenting thoughtful, wholly authentic characterisations. Ben Wishaw is excellent too as the sensitive and sympathetic young male teacher August who is enlisted to take the minutes of the women’s discussions. A timely exploration into who is listened to, and believed, and why.