#frances-mcdormand

#frances-mcdormand

I've learned to never say never with the Oscars, but let's be real: Women Talking is not going to win best picture.Writer/director Sarah Polley's adaptation of Miriam Toews's 2018 novel is too cerebral, too sedentary, too much of what it says it is women talking in the aftermath of horrific sexual violence within their community to win over enough Oscar voters.

Ben Whishaw, Rooney Mara and Claire Foy star in Women Talking, which tells the story of a religious colony devastated by sexual violence.Michael Gibson/Orion Miriam Toews' novel Women Talking is drawn from events that came to light in a Bolivian Mennonite colony in 2009, when a group of men was charged with raping more than 100 girls and women in their community.

From left, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod and Jessie Buckley in "Women Talking."(Michael Gibson/Orion Pictures) StarOutline (3 stars) "What follows is an act of female imagination."Are any eight words more terrifying?In "Women Talking," Sarah Polley's impassioned if inescapably didactic adaptation of Miriam Toews's novel, a group of Mennonite women gather in a barn to debate how to respond to the sexual assault that women in their community have endured for decades.

Miriam Toews, who grew up in a small Mennonite community in Canada until she was 18, started important conversations with her 2018 novel Women Talking.The work was inspired by the true story of women in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia who were sexually abused.Between 2005 and 2009, girls and women in the colony woke up with bruised bodies and bloodied sheets.