23.2.23
Subtle yet powerful, but far from melodramatic, Women Talking bottles feminist outrage into a wooden cabin, and then allows the voices within it to be wholeheartedly expressed. It’s dialogue-driven, contemplative and timely. I admit I wasn’t fully entertained by it, but it is certainly a film to be admired.
I think the main star of the film is the unique sense of time and place that it puts us in. Although Women Talking is set in the modern day, the isolated patriarchal community we see reflects a culture where women are firmly second-class citizens (not unlike Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale). What I once believed to be a radical feminist notion (absolute separatism from men) now seems perfectly reasonable in the context of what they experience.
There’s absolutely no fault in any of the performances, and the scripting is excellent due to so many of the questions asked by characters being explored by the audience too. It feels like a very ‘fly on the wall’ observation of how rebellion is actually quite a reasonable proposition for people who repeatedly get fucked over and ignored.
Not a film that I will be rushing back to see, but an important one nonetheless. If this is what women talking sounds like, then men should have absolutely no problem listening.