Radical dialogue and open roads in 'Women Talking'

NEW YORK (AP) — When Sarah Polley has flown from her home in Toronto to the U.S. this year for the release of her film “Women Talking,” she’s had conversations with customs officials that usually go something like this:

“What are you here for?”

“I’m screening a film.”

“What’s the name of the film?”

“Women Talking.”

“Then I get either the biggest eyeroll you’ve ever seen or I get something openly confrontational like, ‘I’ve had enough of that in my life. I’m not going to see that movie,’ Polley says. “Then I have to decide whether to take the bait and risk not getting into the country.”

Sometimes, she does take the bait. The title, she notes, isn’t “Women Shouting” or “Women Berating.” And yet she’s found it’s often received like a confrontation.

“One guy I asked: ‘So if I told you there was this movie called “12 Angry Men,” would you feel the same way?’” Polley, the 43-year-old Canadian filmmaker and actor, said on a recent stop in New York. “He was like ‘I don’t know.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I think you should just sit with that then. I still want to get into the country, I’m just saying to sit with that.’”

Simple as its title may be, “Women Talking” is a radical work, in both its subject matter and execution. It’s adapted from Miriam Toews’ acclaimed 2018 novel, loosely based on real events, about an ultraconservative Mennonite colony in Bolivia where many of the village’s women gather in a hayloft to discuss a deeply alarming revelation: Men in their colony have been drugging and raping them in their sleep.

The conversation that unspools among the women (the ensemble includes Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy and Ben Wishaw as the...