Nona Storer

The situation depicted in "Women Talking" is compelling: women in an isolated, cult-like environment where men use religion to enforce their power over women, all the while being complicit in protecting the rapists and wife-beaters among themselves. Yet I was offended by the choice to set the drama in a colony of Mennonites. Why pick on them and cast them in this light? Near the end we learn that they are in the Southern Hemisphere, as if that really changes things. I couldn't understand the women's treatment of August, the university-educated teacher at the boys school. Although he is helping them, they treat him disrespectfully. Unrealistically, they tell him he must stay to teach the boys to be better than their fathers, as if the men will let him. He is unlike the other men in the community, they do not treat him well, and they will likely blame him for the women's departure. Hypocritically, the women do not care whether he wishes to stay or go. Unlike them, he does not have the right to self-determination. For uneducated women, they are remarkably sophisticated in their dialogues. I know they are smart, but really? It sounds like they all took courses in philosophy and literature. I found the movie enjoyable, but offensive as well.