Canadian cinematographer Luc Montpellier says portraying abuse and recovery in the highly anticipated film 'Women Talking' required a thoughtful approach, using lighting, colour and different screen formats to show the 'seismic shift' such abuses can create in communities.
Canadian cinematographer Luc Montpellier is seen on the set of director Sarah Polley's 'Women Talking.'
Directed by Canadian Sarah Polley – her first feature in almost a decade – the film is an adaptation of Miriam Toews’ acclaimed novel by the same name about a group of women who, reeling from multiple counts of sexual abuse newly uncovered within their Mennonite colony, gather in a hayloft to discuss how to respond: do nothing, stay and fight, or leave.
To do this, Montpellier said they shot in a traditional widescreen format that is historical in film to represent the colony itself. He said the format also makes audiences feel like they have been"absorbed" into the women's world. However, Montpellier said he wanted shots taken outside of the hayloft to represent hope and show"the beauty of what the women are possibly leaving behind."
"The whole film … essentially is almost like a fable… There's this quote that shows up at the beginning of the film that says, 'This is an act of female imagination,' because the film takes on that shape," he said."I felt a lot of responsibility to try to make choices like this, as opposed to be passive with the photography."
"We needed to reimagine it as a film so that when you're sitting there for 90 minutes, we’re using everything at our disposal visually to make you feel very much like the book made a lot of people feel," Montpellier said."There was one day where Miriam came to visit us on the set, and we were showing her some of the footage we had shot and she just burst into tears because it was way beyond what she had imagined," Montpellier said.
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