zoë rose bryant’s review published on Letterboxd:
Women Talking is so many things, all at the same time, and all of them absolutely stunning. An empathetic epic on an intimate scale. A radical act of female reinvention. And an emotionally enlightening examination of our eternal struggle to (safely) secure our space in the world. Sarah Polley’s delicate direction and sensitive screenplay pair like poetry, while the entire ensemble is so uniformly exceptional that I struggle to single out a favorite performance at the moment - though Claire Foy’s raw rage might have resonated with me the most (but Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara, Ben Whishaw, and Judith Ivey were all equally affecting, and Sheila McCarthy may have given my favorite monologue).
As an aspiring female filmmaker myself - and one who wishes to tell similar stories, in as moving and merciful a manner as Polley - I don’t think I’ve seen anything all year that’s inspired and invigorated me as an artist as much as this. The final scene alone is some of the most stirring cinema I’ve seen in this century thus far - such a riveting and cathartic release of emotion, sublimely scored by Hildur Guðnadóttir, as Polley fills us all with feelings of fear and freedom, simultaneously. Few creatives have ever captured the female experience and all that our bodies and souls endure in this lifetime as expertly as she does here. It’s all there - all our anger and anguish right alongside our compassion and camaraderie.
Two final things:
1) Enough with the color grading complaints, because whatever “side” you’re on, it doesn’t diminish the film’s impact whatsoever.
2) This is not a claustrophobic or “contained” film in the slightest. Sarah Polley’s direction is emotionally expansive, and the scope is far wider than most have said. We’ve been told what “momentous” and “meaningful” movies are “supposed” to look like for a century, but this mental image we all share has been filtered through a masculine lens. “Significant” stories don’t all look the same, and we - and cinema - are better off for it.
