An early scene in "Women Talking" shows two teenage girls sitting side by side in the loft of a barn. Wordlessly, one begins to undo the folds and twists of the other's intricate braid, and by the time the camera cuts back to them, they are tying off a new braid that blends their long hair together. Meanwhile, the other women in the room debate the possibilities and hazards of forming a new social order. The unruly braid that now binds the two girls, the intimacy and the whimsy of it, captures in simplified miniature the sort of reimagined order the women seek.
