"Away From Her" - new film by Sarah Polley

I kinda felt the same way tbh

i think i preferred stories we tell to take this waltz. i definitely started stories we tell, having known nothing about it, feeling like, what is this story? does this merit a documentary? but i felt like it kept me engaged and that i enjoyed it and that it merited the run time

Nice to meet ILX'or cryptosicko tonight; we saw Polley's new film, Women Talking, with Polley there for a Q&A afterwards. I think we were basically in agreement about the film: impressed that she got it made, hope that it does well and wins awards, but thought it was a rather careful (and for me sometimes deadening) checking off of certain boxes meant for this moment, right-thinking every step of the way. The audience questions in the Q&A were consistently good. (I held back from ruining the gravity of everything by asking how much she had to pay to use "Daydream Believer.")

(To put it another way: Armond White, if he ends up writing about the film, will go off on it noisily and gleefully, and even though I wish Sarah Polley well, I'll know what he means.)

Curious how much of that critique could be leveled at the novel it's based on?

I haven't read it, but it sounds like her adaptation was pretty faithful, although they changed the novel's narrator about three months into editing.

how much she had to pay to use "Daydream Believer."

You once thought of [the men of the Mennonite community] as a white knight on a steed
Now you know how funky they can be

Yeah, I'm basically where clemenza is at with Women Talking: I'm happy for the bucketful of awards that Sarah Polley will get for this, even though it is my least favourite of her films by some distance (I haven't read the novel either). A few other observations:

* The film is visually drab to the point of being downright ugly. I'm sure there is some thematic reason for this--the look of the film is every bit as stifling as the world these characters inhabit, perhaps--but I cannot offhand recall a film that isn't a contemporary CGI-fuelled blockbuster that I hated looking at as much as this one.

* Despite having just watched I've Heard The Mermaids Sining, I didn't recognize Sheila McCarthy until the end credits alerted me to her presence (as I said to clem afterwards, I actually thought it was Patrica Clarkson at first). Now that I know, I'm glad she's still around and getting work--a sentiment echoed by another audience member who spoke during the Q&A.

* I will be interested to hear, as more people see the film, some takes on the trans character that, according to Polley, was something that she took some license with in adapting the novel. I'm hesitant to say more at this point, but I definitely Have Questions.

I have a screener sitting at home; it looks like the kind of film I will welcome as a tonic after Bones and All.

i saw Women Talking a few months ago at TIFF and i more or less agree with the above (though i was less annoyed by its drab visuals than the majority)

what i will say (that i also said at the time) is that a lot of the same people who took issue with the characters operating too much as talking points for the Discourse took no issue with the same approach being taken for How To Blow Up a Pipeline (which should be said is a better movie imo), idk if it's because HTBUAP is a bit more plot-driven and thus easier to excuse the approach or if it's because radical climate activism is a bit less well-trodden territory than sexual abuse

One guy in the audience, before asking his question, began by telling Polley how much he liked Take This Waltz. She answered the question, then added "And thank you for being a man who liked Take This Waltz." Simultaneously, crypto and I raised our hands from towards the back of the theatre: "We liked it too!"

(Scrolling back, my post on Take This Waltz doesn't really reflect that...I guess over time the one thing I loved, the amusement-park scene to the Buggles, is the one thing I still remember from the film.)

I'm sure she's more aware of the reception of the film than I am, but I never saw Take This Waltz as a battle-of-the-sexes story and I'm surprised anyone would have taken it on that level.

I was not a fan either.

really enjoyed women talking tbh. the look didn’t bother me at all, it honestly still managed to be beautiful even though it felt like there was no real color and every impression of color was like a glow off a shadow

Yeah I loved this, incl. the way it looks (though I'm generally fond of washed out greenery). Palette seemed like a response to the opening line about being "banished from the real." And that stargazing scene, amazing.

interesting to see it after the whale, another movie that’s functionally a single-location one-act play, bc it felt like there was far more filmic invention in the sudden flashes backwards and sideways in women talking. it was also not completely miserable

the scene where they reveal what year it is 1) rules 2) manages to not feel cheap or like a twist. it’s like watching modernity drive through a landscape it’s only touched by the edges

and yet the colony is just a microcosm of our own supposedly progressed society! anyway, loved this movie, like thinking about it, think the critics who accuse it of reeling off 2010s feminist twitter talking points need to log off

oooh really? Who's written that?

I saw it again a couple weeks ago. I still think it looks drab and has a genuine pacing problem but I admired it more.

oooh really? Who's written that?

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, January 22, 2023 7:49 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://boxd.it/3tlRZD

The "Twitter in 2017" jab reveals the limits of that guy's experience with how women talk. There's something heightened about the dialogue, in keeping with the film's staginess, but it didn't feel untrue to their milieu. Women have been grappling with matters of consent and harm for millennia.