Herstory

 

WOMEN TALKING (C+) - Well, it is right there in the title. Truth in advertising. This is a movie about women talking. Whether it seems tedious to you will depend on your point of view and your tolerance for showy performances.

Sarah Polley offers a stagey and over-acted drama about abused women debating whether to leave their Amish-like religious cult. And boy, do they debate it. While all the evil men are away (improbably), some of the women meet in a hay loft to argue over whether they should stay (and possibly rebel against the men) or escape (and possibly doom their souls to hell).

The film is based on a Miriam Toews novel, which itself is launched from a true story of a Mennonite colony in Bolivia in the 1950s. It feels odd to place this in what seems like a North American setting in the year 2010; while it might be understandable for women to feel trapped and without options 60-plus years ago in the middle of South America, that feels more like an implausible conceit in modern times. 

That's a shaky foundation for a bleak drama, and the performances of the women never fit well together. Rooney Mara is the surprise powerhouse here (like in "Carol"), hitting just the right tone as the pregnant Ona, with a crush on the man who watches over the women and takes notes of their deliberations, August (Ben Whishaw), whose job it is to teach the schoolboys. Jessie Buckley (much better in "The Lost Daughter" and "Wild Rose") bursts with promise, but she can't seem to find a consistent voice as Mariche, who lives with a particularly abusive husband. The short straw, though, goes to Claire Foy as angry Salome, who wants to stay and fight; Foy comes off as strident, as if she is on stage playing to the cheap seats. Frances McDormand offers little more than an uninteresting cameo.

Nothing comes together here. It all feels like jagged ideas tossed together into a sluggish narrative. Much of the "action" takes place in that hay loft, giving this a claustrophobic air. Whishaw's August cries a bunch of times, and you wonder why Mara's Ona would fall for such a sap, even if he is the opposite of the unseen brutes. In the final reel, Polley rushes toward a Cecile B. DeMille ending that feels undeserved. Besides, it's 2010; even if they choose to leave, how far will they get in their horse-drawn wagon, trailing a bunch of kids, and with no money. Do we care? It's clearly fiction.

PAMELA: A LOVE STORY (B) - The bombshell Pamela Anderson gets a sympathetic portrayal in a rote documentary that nonetheless reveals layers of Anderson that you might not expect. She comes off as thoughtful and introspective -- would you believe she has kept a diary most of her life? 

Director Ryan White, who has also profiled tennis champ Serena Williams and Dr. Ruth Westheimer, hangs with Anderson during COVID days, when she has let her guard down and retreated to her ancestral home in British Columbia. (Yet another fun fact: she's Canadian!) Now in her 50s, she often appears here without makeup and in baggy clothes, suggesting that she has finally been freed from whatever obsessive diet that gave her a famously waspy figure. 

Anderson reflects on the good, the bad and the ugly of her life, most notably the whirlwind romance with rock drummer Tommy Lee. (That was only one of six of her marriages; the most recent one comes and goes during the course of filming.) She still comes off as willfully naive about the whole sex-tape scandal. But she gets to make the case that she at least has some acting chops to go with her sex appeal, including a recent run on Broadway in "Chicago."

While the career highlights help structure the narrative, it's the small personal moments that make the movie. She might have played a bunch of bubbleheads on the screen, but she actually is rather meditative, even a bit philosophical, in her day-to-day life. Let's wish her luck on that path to tranquility. 

BONUS TRACK

To drive home its tone-deaf nature, "Women Talking" heavily features the old Monkees hit, "Daydream Believer." Here is the version by the songwriter, John Stewart: