Jessie Buckley, born in Killarney, Ireland, trained at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, an Oscar nominee for her performance in the excellent Maggie Gyllenhaal-directed Netflix drama “The Lost Daughter,” has in a few short years gone from “Who’s she? She’s good!” to simply and reliably being among the very best screen performers working today.
She brings an air of clean, piercing curiosity and resolve to every complicated woman she takes on, and when they’re relatively simple on the page, she makes them complicated and interesting on screen. The feverish accolades for a recent West End stage revival of “Cabaret,” in which Buckley co-starred with Eddie Redmayne, asserted her theatrical chops as well as her excellent taste in collaborators.
“Women Talking” is one of those collaborative gems, screen division. Now in theaters, director-adapter Sarah Polley’s beautifully finessed version of the 2018 Miriam Toews novel was born out of a galling real-life account, that of the “ghost rapes” victimizing the women of a Bolivian Mennonite community. Those committing the serial sexual assaults were, in fact, the men, preying on the women, then blaming their memories on the influence of demonic spirits.
