06/01/2025
by Sarah Polley
USA, 2022
Women talking is “an act of female imagination”. The direction, screenplay, production, book on which the film is based, and even the music, are (almost) entirely the product of women’s creativity. But that is not the point. And Sarah Polley, who wrote and directed Women talking in 2022, tells us this at the very beginning of the film. Even if the story is inspired by appalling true events (that took place in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia about 15 years ago – although you only find this out by reading about the film on the internet), they are only an excuse to speak about women’s subjugation, patriarchy, and the road to self-determination and empowerment.
It is women’s voices that we hear throughout this film. The only male character is there to take notes (a task usually entrusted to a female secretary) because he can do what the women have never been taught to do – read and write – thus ensuring that their subjection can be continued. Yet their voices are not those of ignorant and crushed women. They are exceptionally strong, profound and sophisticated – to the extent that there is an apparent inconsistency between the setting of the film (the backward Mennonite colony), the characters (the illiterate Mennonite women) and the dialogues.
But here is where the initial disclaimer comes in to help. It does not matter where and when the story takes place. Because this story has happened, still happens, and – sadly – could happen again anywhere, anytime. It is women’s thousand-year-old story. The film is also about the still recent journey of women to self-awareness, to the recognition of their own value and of the cultural conditioning they have experienced since birth – a cultural conditioning in which they are the object and at the same time the instrument, and which affects men as well. Yet this cultural conditioning should not serve as an alibi for men’s crimes and complicity. It is hard to leave behind something you have lived your entire life – but education (epitomised in the figure of the notetaker) together with collective action and solidarity are the way out.
Dialogues are all that matter in Women talking. The scene is mostly set in a hayloft, but it is never claustrophobic because the women’s talking gives it breadth. Nevertheless, the dialogues are also the film’s weak point as they are, at times, too cerebral and artificial. Despite this, however, the film carries a powerful message. And a question remains with you at the end: ‘how would it make you feel if, for your entire life, it did not matter what you thought?’
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