BOOK TO SCREEN POST! I know you were all waiting for this one! I went to see it the first day it came out in my city because I was so intrigued. This movie is based on the 2018 novel by Miriam Toews which is about a group of mennonite women in an isolated Bolivian colony who have endured a series of sexual assaults from the men in the community, which are then dismissed by the courts as being fabrications of wild female imagination. The book begins after the court's ruling and imagines the women meeting together secretly to discuss what they should do now, stay and fight back or leave and create their own society. I have an enormous amount of respect for both Miriam Toews and Sarah Polley as artists. What they both have is an incredible deal of compassion and thoughtfulness, which makes everything they do both considered and original and pure. So it was fascinating to me what this collaboration would look like. The film is faithful to the book on which it was based. And more specifically to Toews's writing style which is so tender and funny. There are these visual moments in the film that capture the grace in Toews's writing. The group of women, even when discussing the darkest subjects, often stop to burst out laughing at an absurd aside. Once again, this is true to Toews who always captures the way women communicate in all its odd peculiarities, that makes the way she writes women so hilarious and heartbreaking. Polley's direction of the actors is stunning. They are all so engaged in the universe she created and welcomed them into. It is also really unusual to see this group of actors through Polley's female gaze. And you really do feel her gaze, as you look at these actresses as human beings. Nobody seems more beautiful than the others. Polley has done this in other films, where she presents us with different female bodies than one ordinarily sees on screen, and allows us to find them profoundly beautiful. . . . #bookstagram #book #booklover #bookreview #bookrecommendations #igreads #womentalking #miriamtoews