WOMEN TALKING- Movie Trailer & Discussion Thread

It looks like a filmed version of a play.

The sort of film you need caffeine to get through.

Extensive interview with Sarah Polley.

[quote]Honestly, I’m a bit surprised that the cast didn’t work with a speech coach to reach an approximation of Mennonite speech for the production

of course, so you could then complain the Mennonite speech wasn't perfect

Looks interesting, but I haven't paid to see a movie in years.

I know, this seems perfecto ripe for release on a streaming platform, but I’m sure it will be at least pay per view before Oscar noms.

What is the LGBTQIA+ content of this movie?

None.

I know the reviews out of the festivals were great, but if you wanted to embody the joyless, dreary slogs masquerading as movies that win Oscars, the trailer for Women Talking pretty much nails it.

A story about the sexual assault of Mennonite women from the producers of Moonlight and Nomadland featuring Frances McDormand at her most stone-faced and gloomy Rooney Mara?

Get the razors and prepare the warm bath!

Mennonite women??

Is this a film about Alok Vaid-Mennon ??

Only M and her many daughters could have authentically mastered the tricky Mennonite accent.

I grew up around Mennonites in Ohio and it kind of bothers me that the women are wearing print dresses & Mennonites (who are more liberal than old order Amish) *never* wear prints. This movie doesn't look, but it looks like the kind of Oscar bait movie that wins awards, but no one really wants to watch. As far as the women being illiterate, Mennonites typically do go to school (if not public, then a separate school) through the 6th grade.

R11 It says in this article that they sourced authentic textiles from Mennonite suppliers in Southern Manitoba.

The book really disappointed me. I thought it was flat and boring for such an interesting story. Sarah Polley can be quite self serious and humorless so I'm not in any rush to see the film adaptation.

These are Bolivian Mennonites and the women are also wearing dark saturated print colors. But I just realized going back to watch the trailer that I think they’ve changed the location from the book and the real story, which was South America, nothing looks tropical in the landscapes. It most likely takes place in Canada, or the US, which is strange because part of the isolation and fear about leaving the colony is that they don’t speak Spanish, making it even harder for them in the outside world. I think Polley’s considerably adapted things from the book and it might really just contain the seed kernels of the original story.

Excellent in-depth review. To answer a few questions posed above the movie is set in the United States now and not in South America. There’s no mention of why America over Canada. This is interesting as the stakes of leaving the community changes quite a bit as they couldn’t speak Spanish and would have been very isolated in the outside world. There’s is also mention of a Transman character, which I don’t recall in the book, or was so subtle I didn’t pickup on it. All in the reviews says it feels very much like a state production.

So it's She Said with bonnets and long skirts?

Sara claims to be this uber woke feminist yet she allowed that ugly rapist Iranian guy to rape her and he was allowed to rape hundreds of white girls! What kind of sick world do we live in where girls let super fug Iranians rape them and then do nothing. Google Jian Ghomeshi if you don't know who the rapist of Sara's was.

Shit. Fucking HELL!!!

I had this in the bag. Where the fuck did this come from?

That little last minute BITCH!

There’s no real lead in this though, they are all supporting. I think this is what worried the White Michelle Williams and caused her to commit category fraud. She could probably take down one or two Amish women, but if they flood the category she’d drown.

No, no, no , no, NO, NO, NO, NO, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

[quote] a Transman character, which I don’t recall in the book

Weird I just lost interest in this movie

[quote]a Transman character, which I don’t recall in the book

I don't know why they shoehorned that into the film but it is a very minor plot point so it's not as if the character is in many scenes.

[quote]There’s no real lead in this though,

Amazon has put everyone in MY POLICEMAN as Supporting when Emma Corrin, Harry Styles and the Dawson guy should be leads and Rupert Everett and Linus Roache as Supportin. UA should rightfully run everyone as Supporting but Rooney Mara is in the Best Actress category with the others as Supporting. This piece is a true ensemble. If they must distinguish certain actors, Rooney and Claire Foy should have both put in the Best Actress category.

Does Frances McDormand get an Oscar just for showing up?

Saw the trailer for this last week before “Bones and All”. Aside from finding Rooney Mara very boring onscreen (most of the time), it came across as another “oppressed women” film, a topic Polley seems obsessed with, and which I’ve seen more than enough of in cinema and literature at this point. The theme has been done to death at this point.

Since I myself am PA Dutch, grew up in Amish country, and still have "plain people" in my extended family on my mother's side, I'd probably be critiquing plot points and finding discrepancies the whole way through this film -- so I don't think I'll bother. I did, however, like the movie "Witness" and really felt like it captured the culture pretty accurately.

On a side note, please don't forget about the Amish puppy mills. Never, ever buy a puppy from Amish/Mennonite/"plain" people. They are notorious for their horrible puppy mills, because they don't believe animals have souls, and therefore take literally what the Bible says about man having dominion over the birds, animals, etc. Thank you.

R26 This is a different order of Mennonite- different from the Amish. Their dressing is different with women wearing a black headscarf, not a cap, and their dresses are usually a print fabric but uniform in style. Men usually wear plaid shirts and denim jeans. They speak low German.

We have several where I work in farming. I grew up around the Amish and similar Mennonites and this order is very different. They come up from a colony in Mexico and usually have dual citizenship in Canada and Mexico.

R20 I'm shocked that this doesn't star Michelle Williams. Everything about the story screams Michelle " Sad face" Williams.

White Michelle Williams does throw off a good Low German look, I guess she was just more interested in pushing herself artistically by playing a Jewish mother? And I could see her and Frances being nemeses.

Thanks, R27.

Michelle is great in The Fablemans. A rich performance.

This looks dour. And the trans representation thing is so ridiculous now. The west side story remake stopped dead in its tracks with that shoehorn in plot. Calm down, tony kushner, lesbians are real and transmen are not.

Polley needs to make a film just for white girls only about the joys of being raped by super fug Iranian guys named Jian. White girls'd be lined up.

I liked how they leave Frances McDormand behind at the end, obviously to torture the men.

We’ve had enough of that after metoo and all the SJW & Repug cunt TikTok videos through quarantine, how about ‘Silent Women’?

I'm really surprised this movie hasn't performed better on the awards circuit since this movie just has "Oscar Bait" written all over it. I'd like to see it, if for no other reason than to see Ben Whishaw, who is great in whatever he's in

I finished watching this yesterday.

I think it works better as a play than a film. It's very reminiscent of 12 Angry Men--a group of people in a room deliberating on an impending decision while questioning their own morals and values in the process.

It definitely feels made for the stage, with lengthy, interesting monologues the showcase the acting prowess of the ensemble--but this very structure is sort of what takes me out of the film. We're to believe these are uneducated, deeply religious women who have spent their lives isolated from the outside world--and yet, they talk as if they're philosophy majors doing deep dives on the nature of forgiveness, violence and female autonomy.

Not that women in isolated communities couldn't have such discussions, but I would imagine the language used would be less refined and the ideas communicated more simply...something I would expect from women who could neither read or write, and who were raised under strict and unrelenting patriarchal order.

Jessie Buckley is an interesting actress, this could be good.

Polley cannot help but show how weak she is as a writer/director. The little girl tries to build a facade of being so au courant. She has yet to have a great movie. She appeals to the indie crowd, that's all.

Yes, such weak writing…

The dialogue to me was over-expositional. Characters said things to each other just to explain to the audience how things work in the commune even though the characters involved in the conversation already know the information. It came off as clunky.

[quote]It definitely feels made for the stage, with lengthy, interesting monologues the showcase the acting prowess of the ensemble--but this very structure is sort of what takes me out of the film. We're to believe these are uneducated, deeply religious women who have spent their lives isolated from the outside world--and yet, they talk as if they're philosophy majors doing deep dives on the nature of forgiveness, violence and female autonomy.

Watched WT this weekend & that comment is spot on; as opposed to an organic conversation/argument, each character makes a "Big Speech" about how she's processed (or hasn't) this trauma. And they're supposed to be so uneducated that they can't even write their names, yet they're having this conversation like some sort of Advanced Women's studies program. And the Rooney Mara character, you never entirely get why she won't marry the Ben Whishaw character, but somehow she's to enlightened to marry for convenience when she's an uneducated single pregnant woman. That seemed patently ridiculous - that & the non-speaking trans person. Sigh. But it wasn't all terrible - my favorite characters were actually the older women who had perspective on how women had been traditionally treated by men and it was genuinely moved when the Whishaw character cried when the women left. The final scene of the wagon train of all the women leaving was a nice end, but the story just didn't work as a movie.

Hated it!

It’s available free to watch on Prime right now for 5 more days, of course they never actually alerted me to that… I don’t think I’m in the right head space to watch tonight, but maybe tomorrow.

^This is a good idea, but they should've done this earlier to get Oscar buzz. WT was in very theatres & not available online (like Banshees), so very few people have likely viewed the movie at this point.

Yay! I’m so glad this happened!

Interesting to see that a signifier of ACTUAL POWER in hollywood now is natural-looking teeth. Can't be too white or too perfect. People with those hi-white chiclet teeth now look utterly desperate.

Good.

This was a snooze fest. Would work far better as a play, but too static and stagnant as a moving picture. Some of the extemporizing also felt false given how limited they all supposedly were in their language/verbal skills.

Love Jessie Buckley and it boasts a great cast. But man oh man, this was a slog through and through. And the above commenter's quip about it sounding like an 'advanced women's studies' lecture nailed it.

R46 She’s Canadian and has fought against Hollywood standards for decades. She got the part of Penny Lane in Almost Famous and then did everything she could to get out of it. Kate Hudson owes her whole career to Sarah.

Side note: Rooney Mara has terrible posture; even in an industry with very thin women, she's incredibly thing & is looking old. She's going to be a stooped old woman in the not so distant future.

R49 I hope Sally Field was there and able to sit with her and go over the benefits of Boniva.

The title alone makes me want to run fast and far.