Should they do nothing, stay and fight, or leave the only home they know? On their way to a decision, the women argue about the nature of evil, the limits of forgiveness, and the meaning of faith, interspersing their intellectual debate with rage, panic, cruelty, and even laughter. In 2018, Canadian author Miriam Toews, who was raised in a small Mennonite town in Manitoba, published her novel Women Talking, in which eight women from a fictional Mennonite community meet in a hayloft to debate their response to a similar series of crimes. The men, all members of the community, had used livestock anesthetic to immobilize their victims, who ranged in age from 65 to just five years old. Eventually, nine men were convicted of the assault and rape of 151 women and girls. Community leaders dismissed the mysterious attacks for years, insisting that they were the work of the devil or that the women were simply lying or imagining things.

Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley in particular make the most of their moments, capturing the rage, determination, and vulnerability of women attempting to protect themselves and their children in a world where their options are devastatingly limited.'Īmy Nicholson of FilmWeek backed up this assertion, writing that 'Women Talking' is 'a film with so much depth and, of course, one of the greater casts you'll see this year.' Beth Webb of Empire concurred, saying, 'A remarkable ensemble of performers unite for this combustible, timely chamber-piece that hails the return of Polley as an ambitious and empirical filmmaker.' And while audiences weren't quite as enraptured by the movie, 'Women Talking' does boast a 79% audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.Before the movie, before the novel, there was the horrific reality: in the early 2000s, in an isolated Mennonite community in the Bolivian lowlands, women began to awaken naked, disoriented, and in pain, sometimes covered with cuts and bruises.

They are a true ensemble cast, stepping forward at some points and gracefully moving out of the way at others, giving each woman an opportunity to make her mark on the film. Well, Looper's own Audrey Fox had this to say about 'Women Talking:' 'With a focus on monologuing, 'Women Talking' does right by all of its performers.

Women talking the novel