It’s a horrific story, especially since it’s true: In 2011, seven men from a Mennonite community in Bolivia were sentenced to 25 years in prison after being found guilty of years of rape on more than 130 of their sisters, whom they drugged with an anesthetic for cattle.
This infamy inspired author Miriam Toews, herself from a Mennonite community, to write the novel Women Talking (translated by the late Lori Saint-Martin under the title what they say). From this powerful material, the filmmaker Sarah Polley has made an essential film where, from anger, is born determination and, from words, hope.
That day, a group of women gathered at the top of a barn, in the hayloft, to decide the future of their friends, their sisters, their mothers, grandmothers, daughters and granddaughters. Indeed, shaken since they learned that the attacks they suffered repeatedly, at night, when they were unconscious, are not the work of “demons” but of men from their Christian community an evangelical Anabaptist, the women asked a few of them to choose between three options: leave, stay and fight, or stay and do nothing.
From the outset, this third possibility was ruled out by the majority, while the other two aroused the stubborn refusal of one of the delegates: Scarface Janz (Frances McDormand, brief but striking).
A lively, and at times acrimonious, debate ensues between Ona (Rooney Mara), Salome (Claire Foy), Mariche (Jessie Buckley), Agata (Judith Ivey) and Greta (Sheila McCarthy). Because, although they more or less agree on the impossibility of maintaining the status quo, they do not all see things the same way. If they leave, many will leave behind loved ones who have done nothing wrong. But on reflection, are these men who did not take part in the plot innocent for all that?
And then, this community is the home they have always known…
They are also believers, and forgiveness is a fundamental value…
From discussions to revelations, from outbursts to confidences, they must come to a decision at all costs. Because their meeting is clandestine. In fact, the women took advantage of the temporary absence of the men, who had gone to town to free the attackers caught in the act. Tic-tac: soon they will be back.
Visual poetry
Without obscuring them or taking pleasure in them, Sarah Polley shows with punchy brevity the aftermath full of bruises and blood of sometimes horribly young victims.
In this case, the filmmaker does not come out of the hayloft only during these hard-hitting flashbacks. On the contrary, thanks to breaks, the protagonists are filmed in the surrounding fields during sequences whose poetry willingly summons Terrence Malick and Jane Campion.
This desire to open the camera also translates into passages where the filmmaker captures, outside, a moment that evokes what is said inside. Thus “oxygenated”, visually, the film breathes and unfolds with great breadth. A magnitude of circumstance, in that the issues addressed are crucial.
Hence, moreover, this decision to make the film take place in a reality that is certainly recognizable, but subtly mythologized. As Sarah Polley confided to us in an interview: “It was in order to preserve this timeless dimension […] which participates in this almost allegorical will. »
The camera floats, graceful, on the lookout for scattered beauties capable of softening the horror… The director is admirably supported by Luc Montpellier, her cinematographer attracted since his first film, Away from Her (away from her), and Icelandic cellist and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir.
Apart from a denouement which stretches a bit before the last and unforgettable image occurs, Women Talking, propelled by skilful ellipses, advances at a good pace. That in itself is a feat, considering the inherently discursive nature of the film.
A speech, by the way, which turns out to be enlightening, poignant, stimulating, never pontificating. These women, we never tire of listening to them.