3.5 stars out of 5
Well, I can’t say the title didn’t give me a heads-up. There is a lot of talking. Do you know that play A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking? Like, multiply that.
The more I read about the true story this is sort of based on, the more I wish this movie was a documentary, or at least “based on a true story.” There is an ultra-conservative, modern-world-shunning Mennonite community in Bolivia where the women were routinely drugged and raped. Holy shit, I want to know more about that.
Instead, this film is based on a novel, “an imagined response to real events.” Well, ok, we do get the basics (shifted to somewhere in the rural U.S., I suppose for relatability) but for me that disconnect created too much distance between reality and fiction, and as the story progressed I didn’t have the visceral reaction I would’ve expected. Or that the real events deserved.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good movie, well-made and well-performed (except Ben “Q” Whishaw, the token nice guy, whose character’s Whishaw-washiness got pretty tiresome). Frances McDormand is not in this nearly as much as the trailer led me to believe. We do get two different Girls With the Dragon Tattoos, Rooney Mara and Claire Foy. And as the women discuss their options — Should they stay or should they go now? Or, should they fight their attackers? — there are compelling topics raised for women in repressive cultures (who I don’t think have HBO Max? Not sure?) and for anyone in an abusive relationship. And different argument archetypes are well-represented: play it safe; let’s compromise; let’s burn it down; thoughts filtered through the young, old, and in-between.
There’s just so much talking.
It feels like a play, mostly in one room, for 104 minutes. When director Sarah Polley cuts away from that room, not enough interesting stuff happens before, wham, we’re back in the room. For more talking. It was in the title.
Jack Silbert, curator