On the Power of Choice and Imagination: The Ms. Q&A with 'Women Talking' Producer Dede Gardner
(a fascinating read with the producer of this extremely thought-provoking movie)
On the Power of Choice and Imagination: The Ms. Q&A with ‘Women Talking’ Producer Dede Gardner
1/17/2023 by Aviva Dove-Viebahn
(Left to right): Michelle McLeod as Mejal, Sheila McCarthy as Greta, Liv McNeil as Neitje, Jessie Buckley as Mariche, Claire Foy as Salome, Kate Hallett as Autje, Rooney Mara as Ona and Judith Ivey as Agata in Women Talking. (Michael Gibson / Orion Releasing LLC)
Already showing in select theaters and releasing nationwide on Jan. 27, Women Talking (written and directed by Sarah Polley, based on a novel by Miriam Toews) is both beautiful and harrowing: an ideologically captivating drama about how a group of women with very little agency navigate making a choice that will have profound effects on their lives, their children’s lives and their community. This extraordinary film features an equally extraordinary ensemble cast, including Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Judith Ivey, with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand.
The film takes place in 2010 in an isolated religious community, where it’s been discovered that men and boys have been drugging and raping the women and girls while they sleep (an act that is referenced throughout the film, but never shown). Women Talking concentrates on the small group chosen to make a crucial decision for all the women and girls in the colony: stay and fight back, or leave. What follows is multifaceted debate about trauma, power, faith and choice that vacillates between compassion and fear and between resignation and rage. The women talk, they disagree, they fall apart, and they come together in ways impossible to describe in a few paragraphs. Based loosely on a true story, Women Talking nevertheless positions itself as an “act of female imagination,” as it tells us in an opening title card. The characters and their conversations seem to exist in a world outside of time, bracketed by the voiceover narration of one of the girls present at the meeting (Autje, played by Kate Hallett)—a radical and formative dreamscape of community action, philosophical debate and consensus building.
For all its quiet contemplation, Women Talking is a provocative and gripping film that will challenge viewers to ask difficult but necessary questions about how to move forward from the unspeakable and how to choose when there is no easy path.
Ms. had the opportunity to speak with producer Dede Gardner about her work on the film and its reflection of the power of community, of choice, and of imagination. A two-time Oscar-winning producer (for Best Picture winners 12 Years a Slave [2013] and Moonlight [2016]), Gardner is also the president of Plan B Entertainment and has been a producer on an impressive array of projects (including Tree of Life [2011], Selma [2014], If Beale Street Could Talk [2018], and She Said [2022]).
Aviva Dove-Viebahn: A lot of your work has been producing films that feature underrepresented or marginalized groups and also social justice issues. How do you see Women Talking fitting into your body at work?
Dede Gardner: Well, I make a joke that if you make two movies called ‘Women Talking‘ and ‘She Said‘ in the same moment, it’s a field day for my therapist!
I think it fits. When I look for material, and when I decide that I want to make something, it’s really only ever story first. I come at it from the inside out. Have I fallen in love with a narrative? Do I feel like it hasn’t been told before? Do I feel like I’ll be sad if I don’t try and make it and put it out into the world?
I think I’m interested in the idea of complicity. And if there were one thing that I think is to greater and lesser degrees inside all the films [I’ve produced], it would be that.
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(Left to right) Emily Mitchell as Miep, Claire Foy as Salome and Rooney Mara as Ona in director Sarah Polley’s film Women Talking. (Michael Gibson / Orion Releasing LLC)
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Rooney Mara as Ona in Women Talking. (Michael Gibson / Orion Releasing LLC)
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https://msmagazine.com/2023/01/17/women-talking-film-review/