I finally caught up to one of last year’s most interesting dramas, and will be reviewing others of this period in the weeks to come, before this year’s upcoming awards season.  I have missed quite a few important, acclaimed projects from recent years and hope to correct this oversight over the next couple of months.  So please forgive me if my “Recent Releases” choices stretch back a couple of years in the near future.  At least I’m making the effort.

Sarah Polley’s film takes place in an unnamed (Mennonite) religious colony in an unknown location.  The men are largely absent, having gone to town to bail out of jail and bring back a group of rapists who have been preying on the colony’s women.  The women are meeting in a large barn, trying to decide whether to remain and forgive their assaulters, remain and fight back, or leave.  Over two days the women grapple with their options, discussing what they want from life and how to best achieve their goals.

This is potent drama, and writer-director Polley, working from Miriam Toews’ book, delves deeply into the lives of these self-sacrificing women, providing them with the words and the dramatic space to explore their situation from end to end.  Some want to fight, even if that means murdering their attackers.  Some want to forgive, keeping the status quo and the relative security of their lives as it has been.  Some want to leave, even flee, before the men return and circumstances worsen.  Creating a consensus is difficult, if not impossible, but the women are united by a desire to improve their lot.

The film creates suspense and drama from this scenario without actually showing any of the assaults, and by emphasizing the threat their men and boys represent because their culture is so misogynistic.  There are obvious parallels to our own society, particularly because of the time period the story occurs — which is now!  A census truck reveals the year as 2010, which was a shock to me.  Certain details are modern — antibiotics, a Band-Aid, the language patterns — but I thought this story was set a century ago.  Not so.  The actual events upon which this story are based occurred in Bolivia from 2005-2009.  It’s amazing, and frightening, to realize that this kind of villainy can still be occurring in the modern world.

The film is very good, lensed in fabulous widescreen format and in near-colorless sepia tones, but it exists more as a moral dilemma than a cinematic experience.  Without a dramatic beginning, or any recreation of the assaults, it remains a character drama and moral exercise than a drama.  The ending also creates a rather large void; I want to know what happens when the men return.  But that’s not the point of the story.  This is the women’s side of things, and it’s important.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  25 November 2023.