2/5/23 - Women Talking (2022) - 5+/10

I have deeply appreciated Sarah Polley’s previous work, but I found this to be a deeply unimpressive and disappointing effort. It’s not bad, I just expected a great deal more from the film, which I found muted and banal. Perhaps it was a “cultural manifestation of the subject matter to the form”, shorn of frills and rather focused on the character than appearance, but that doesn’t mean it gripped me.

Interminably stagey, feeling more like a play than any other movie I have seen this year, even the ones based off of plays. It just felt the need to stretch its wings and fly away from this constricting convention.

There are punctuated moments of emotional heft, mostly through powerful acting, but long bouts of perfunctory plainness. I appreciate its premise, purpose, and impetus, but it lacked a peg for me to hoist it and I upward. Being a worthy story does not a good movie make.

A positive of the film: the acting was potent and appreciated namely Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara, Ben Whishaw and Michelle McLeod, but Frances McDormand, who exec produces, was vastly underutilized.