Let’s be real: its nomination for best movie was the win. But Sarah Polley’s film is predicated on action, a #MeToo film that questions with the aim of moving forward
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. It made a meagre $5.6m (£4.67m) as a theatrical release. There doesn’t appear to be a campaign to secure best picture; the nomination was the win.
Women Talking is neither my favourite film that I’ve seen in the past year (that would be Aftersun) nor even the best film in terms of execution of unwieldy ambition (that would be Tár). But it is the one that I most admire, for its imagination of how cinema could respond to #MeToo, for experimenting with what a film inflected by the revelations and recriminations and lessons of the movement could be.
