It was Thursday evening in the Queen City, on King Street, that the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) opened. This, a few hours after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. National mourning or not, the Ontario metropolis will be the center of gravity of the cinema planet until September 18: rain of shooting stars guaranteed. However, the TIFF is not only for the Hollywood firmament and its stars. The opening movie, The Swimmerstells the incredible but true story of Yusra and Sara Mardini, two sisters who fled war-torn Syria before the former shone at the 2016 Rio Olympics, is a good example.
is also Women Talking, camped in an isolated Mennonite community. As holy spiderwhich takes place in Iran, and Emilyin England.
If they seem distinct from the outset in everything, these four films are in fact related, united as they are by their brilliant heroines in a hostile context. The theme of sorority acts there as a quiet or bubbling, but constant force.
Preceded by dithyrambic echoes since its premiere in Telluride, a few days ago, Women Talking is a terrific adaptation of Miriam Towes’ novel written and directed by Sarah Polley (Away From Her, Stories We Tell). The film stars Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, Jessie Bukley, Sheila McCarthy and Frances McDormand. Who says better ?
The latter embody women members of a rigorous Mennonite community, who meet in secret to discuss the attacks they have suffered for years, at night, while they are drugged. Delegates must ultimately decide whether women will stay and forgive, stay and fight, or leave.
The plot is partly based on an infamous true story that took place in a community of the genre, in Bolivia. Already, several publications see Sarah Polley at the Oscars. We wish him so much Women Talking is of a poetry, an acuity and a power, above all, unheard of.
Denounce and stop
Unveiled at Cannes (under the title Mashhad Nights), where actress Zahra Amir Ebrahimi won the acting award, holy spider looks back at the series of feminicides perpetrated in Iran by Saeed Hanaei.
Between 2000 and 2001, he murdered sixteen sex workers in the name of a divine mission. Rather than taking the classic avenue of police investigation, filmmaker Ali Abbasi chose to create the character of a journalist: Rahimi.
Rahimi is determined, on the one hand, to make the authorities admit that a serial killer is targeting prostitutes, and, on the other hand, to stop the murderer, even if it means putting his life in danger.
Far from being dishonest, this bias allows the film to paint a scathing social picture, with the protagonist who is constantly exposed to misogynistic institutions and society (like Polley’s film). There lies the true subject of the film, which never makes any mystery of the identity of the killer.
Moreover, the most disturbing scenes, apart from those of the feminicides shown in all their hateful horror, concern the family of the assassin. There is his wife, who, in tune with a large part of the population at the time, approves of her husband’s actions, judging that these “impure” women deserved to be eradicated: internalized misogyny. There is his young son, who, for Rahimi’s benefit, recreates his father’s modus operandi in horrifying detail by enlisting the services of his younger sister to play the victim: transmitted misogyny. It’s blood-curdling, but the much-needed message gets through.
Real Fake Emily Brontë
Far removed from the Islamist Iran of the early 2000s, Emilyby Frances O’Connor, transports us to England in the first half of the 19the century. The film looks back on the too short existence of Emily Brontë, author of the masterpiece The Wuthering Heights.
A bit like it does holy spider, Emily “fictionalises” the protagonist in such a way as to paint a broader social portrait: a portrait, again like the films of Abbasi and Polley, largely centered on the misogynistic dimension of the patriarchy in place.
This backdrop, depicted with great finesse by the director, whom we saw and admired as an actress in the equally “revisionist for the better” Mansfield Park, by Patricia Rozema, based on Jane Austen, also makes us realize how difficult it must have been for Emily Brontë and her sisters Anne and Charlotte to find — and then impose — their voices. The thwarted love story with a young priest, on which the film speculates, has a similar function. That is to say that, far from making the film sink into the marshmallow, this aspect of O’Connor’s script shows how women could pay dearly for assuming their feelings, while men could on the contrary be inconstant without suffering the slightest consequence.
What’s more, this subplot flavored with tormented passion is perfectly in tune with the Gothic writings of Emily Brontë.
Women of struggle, women of letters, Rahimi and Emily thus reveal themselves as unexpected relatives, spiritual sisters who refuse to confine themselves to the narrow boxes that their respective societies and times have assigned to them. Rahimi and Emily are rebellious, fighters. Witnessing their respective journeys, and that of Yusra and Sara Mardini, and that of all those women who decide to speak out in Women Talkinghas something inspiring, even galvanizing.