It’s the morning after women talk had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival 2022 when cinematographer Luc Montpellier and I meet for our Zoom interview. To say the film, from writer and director Sarah Polley, resonated with audiences would be an understatement. Indeed, after the first ever screening on Telluride, shortly before TIFF, women talk received rave reviews, with The Hollywood Reporter called it a “finely crafted vision of anger and hope” and Variety Already touting Polley as a possible Oscar winner for Best Director in the upcoming awards season. If this happened, she would be the third consecutive female best director, following Jane Campion’s win last year and Chloé Zhao’s in 2021.
Featuring some of the best actresses in Hollywood today such as Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Frances McDormand, women talk effectively marks Polley’s return to the director’s chair after a decade away from the industry. For the shooting of her film, which she had adapted from Miriam Toews’ novel of the same name, Polley enlisted a longtime collaborator Montpellier, who actually served as DP for her other feature films (away from her and Take this waltz). “We have this great process where I get a script pretty early in her process, which is kind of unprecedented,” he says in our interview, “and when she does, she always says a few keywords to set me in the tone of what she thinks.”
In front of women talk, which tells the story of a group of Mennonite women who endure ongoing sexual and physical abuse by the men in their colony as they gather to discuss whether to leave or stay and fight, Montpellier says Polley wanted “the images the epic nature of this decision.” To do this, the cameraman leaned into the subtext of the dialogue-heavy scenes, using camera movements and angles, framing, and the film’s overall texture and color palette to accentuate it. “We didn’t want to avoid the seriousness of the situation,” Montpellier said. “I wanted the audience to be immersed in [the women’s decision-making] on a very subconscious level.”
About shooting women who talk on purpose
“We really dug deep into trying to get the subtext beyond words,” Montpellier says when asked how he and Polley worked to get the dialogue going. women talk. Indeed, most of the film is set in one location – a hayloft – and consists mainly of the group of women discussing possible solutions to the rape epidemic in their colony. “You can easily place cameras in a room full of people and capture everyone in close-up, but we wanted to have a little more intent than that.”
The work of Montpellier in women talk, in addition to his cast (particularly Foy’s show-stopping performance), is one of his crowning achievements. From the desaturated color palette to the dynamic way the camera moves through space and frames the women, the film’s images masterfully emphasize the sometimes opposing points of view that emerged during the encounter, emphasizing each of their characters and perspectives. . “One of the things at the beginning of coming up with this was that Sarah wanted frames to be constantly filled with women’s faces or… [have] group photos of women as they were deciding what to do. We went very sparingly to a single close-up. We were very aware of when we were isolating a character.”
Show violence in women talk, naturally became an important conversation between Polley and Montpellier, particularly regarding what was being shown and how much. “I think as humans we tend to complete the picture in our heads. That’s what I really appreciate about the way Sarah chose to present those moments, even in the quick flashbacks to those events,” says Montpellier on their less-is-more approach. “It wasn’t about shocking the audience. Everyone understands in those early scenes what happened. I think that’s probably even more horrifying: when you sit there and are left to fill in the blanks and fill in the footage to fill.”
Consider women talk was a female-focused story, led by an ensemble cast of female characters, and written, directed, and produced by women, there was a moment, early in development, when Montpellier questioned whether, as a man, he was fit for the position . “When I read Sarah’s script, I called her up and said, ‘I need to find an entrance for the story’, because I’m a man, it’s a female story, and I struggled with that at the beginning.” Montpellier even so far that, despite their steady working relationship, she suggested Polley hire a female cameraman instead. “I was willing to step back, but Sarah told me one simple thing that really changed everything for me, and it’s in the movie too. She said, ‘This movie isn’t just about women. It’s about everyone. is about the conversation men and women should be having about our roles in the world.”