Alan in Belfast: Women Talking – the chance to write a new ending to a story that so far has been formed by others (QFT until Thursday 23 February)

When a group of men who have been accused of abusing women in their isolated Mennonite community in Mexico are arrested, the remaining menfolk ride off to post bail. The women left behind – the abused – realise they have three choices: to stay and do nothing; to stay and fight; or to leave.

In this particular colony, only the young boys are schooled, leaving the women functionally illiterate. The abuse – women and girls being subdued with animal tranquilliser and then raped – has been going on for decades. But the victims have been told they’re imagining the blood on the sheets and the pregnancies that sometimes ensue. It’s the work of ghosts or the devil. But then the face of one attacker is recognised.

“I used to wonder who I would have been if it hadn’t happened to me.”

You could probably transcribe any five-minute section from the first half hour of Women Talking and submit it as your answer to an essay question about abuse of power or how the patriarchy works and you’d score well.

In a week when some in the media and the public are choking over the realisation that a proportion of Presbyterian ministers admit that their denomination permits them to read the Bible in a way that says men and women are both made by God but that men shouldn’t have to sit under the teaching and/or rule of women, the wide spectrum of day to day actions and attitudes in the male-dominated religious community portrayed in Women Talking speak out even louder.

In the case of the film, the physical abuse and subsequent arrest of the men is based on real events. The women’s plebiscite to decide on what they should do is fictional, based on Miriam Toews’ book. But it’s an incredibly powerful way of exploring the issues and how the circumstances developed. When the votes are tied between staying to fight and leaving, a smaller group of families are appointed to make the decision for the rest.

And so teenagers, mothers and grandmothers gather in the barn to talk it out. Their time is limited as the men will return from the city the next day. Threads of debate and uncertainty run throughout the full duration of their Socratic discussion. If they leave their faith community, they’ve been told that they’ll be denied entry to the kingdom of heaven. Some are convinced, others have a bigger image of God. Their need to forgive is tempered with whether it’s possible to forgive and whether forgiveness can be offered with no contrition. Pacifism versus one women’s reckoning that “I will become a murderer if I stay in the colony”. Who is complicit in the abuse that has endured across generations? Are the men victims in some senses as well as the women? At what age will their sons have inevitably succumbed to the default and degrading macho culture. If they left, would the women be well equipped to be safe in the outside world? These are questions that the families debate in the mostly unheated and well-ventilated crucible of an upstairs hayloft which is curated by director Sarah Polley.

Consensus is reached – you’ll have to watch the film to find out what they decided – as dissenting voices convince themselves with very different and personal reasons to change their minds. There are strong performances right across the hayloft ensemble which includes Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Liv McNeil and Michelle McLeod. There are expressions of rage, shame, love and fraternity in abundance.

The community’s schoolteacher – a man whose family were once forced out of the community but it was convenient to allow him to return – sits with the women to write the minutes of their conversation. (He is journalling their discussion so the other men might be able to read it, not so the women have a record.) Ben Whishaw’s performance is gracious and deferential, a man with a servant heart who is damning his own future happiness by helping these women grasp the empowerment that has been denied them for so long.

The conclusion to the tale is less important than the fact that the issues have finally been aired: the power and misuse of religion; being trapped in cycles of abuse; the herd mentality that is hard to break free from even when lots of people know something needs to be addressed. Women Talking is full of hope. Of the chance to write a new ending to a dark story whose narrative has so far been influenced by other people. It’s 104 minutes of cinema that’s well worth catching at Queen’s Film Theatre where it is being screened until Thursday 23 February.