After three short films, Belgian director Leonardo van Dijl makes his feature debut with Julie Keeps Quiet, which premiered to great acclaim at Cannes’ Critics Week and received two prizes, including the Fondation Gan award which favors the winner’s distribution in France. Such an accolade is an early sign of the film’s potential with viewers, with cinephiles likely to be drawn to it partly because of its behind-the-scenes pedigree, with the Dardenne brothers serving as producers through their company Les Films du Fleuve. The arthouse crowd may also show interest in the blend of sports and a topical premise dealing with abuse.
Julie, played by newcomer Tessa Van den Broeck, is a Flemish teen with a knack for tennis: the star player of an elite French-speaking academy, she’s also the teacher’s pet when it comes to the head coach Jérémy (Laurent Caron, whose previous credits include three Dardenne films). Then, one day, tragedy strikes as it’s reported that one Aline, the academy’s former star, has taken her own life.
Soon after, Jérémy is suspended amidst rumors of inappropriate behavior, and all of a sudden all eyes are on Julie who, much like Aline, had a close relationship with the coach and numerous unsupervised encounters with him. Everyone at the academy is invited to testify, with a particular focus on Julie. But the girl stays quiet, per the title, at least on the court: away from prying gazes, she secretly keeps in touch with Jérémy over the phone, refusing to believe, or accept, he could have done anything wrong…
The director, whose short films also deal with various aspects of athletic life, previously touched upon the subject in 2015’s Umpire, and has now expanded the premise into a full-blown feature with the help of co-writer Ruth Becquart, a veteran Belgian actress who also appears in front of the camera as Julie’s mother. Clearly familiar with this world, he depicts it with calculated, yet almost mundane precision, capturing the action in static shots which, paradoxically, accentuate the pained dynamism of the sport.
Key to this approach is also the casting of Van den Broeck, a talented tennis player in real life, whose skill becomes the ideal embodiment of the focus Julie resorts to in order to suppress any and all emotional response to the crisis at hand. Every serve is an anguished denial of everything occurring outside of her tunnel vision, a rejection of a reality that contains multitudes.
Said multitudes are an integral part of the plot structure, which eschews conventional abuse and #MeToo tropes to offer a more nuanced take, with allusion and tiny morsels of information rather than loud declarative sequences, and not just when it comes to the main plot (the implied class disparity between the Flemish-speaking Julie and her French-speaking peers, which adds to the dramatic tension, is all subtext).
The deliberate lack of catharsis, for the viewer and for Julie, is actually the emotional cornerstone of the picture, as Leonardo van Dijl sidesteps clichés to deal with something very raw and very real. Much like the main character, whose every move is designed to excel in a highly competitive domain, he is always in control, carefully designing each shot to illustrate the disconnect at the center of the protagonist’s everyday life, in an artfully devastating portrait of uncomfortable truths and unspoken pain.
Director: Leonardo van Dijl
Screenwriters: Leonardo van Dijl, Ruth Becquart
Cast: Tessa Van den Broeck, Ruth Becquart, Koen De Bouw, Claire Bodson, Laurent Caron
Producers: Gilles De Schryver, Gilles Coulier, Wouter Sap, Roxanne Sarkozi, Delphine Tomson, Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Nima Yousefi
Cinematography: Nicolas Karakatsanis
Production design: Julien Denis
Costume design: Viviane Rapp
Music: Caroline Shaw
Sound: Boris Debackere, Gustaf Berger, Arne Winderickx
Production companies: De Wereldwrede, Les Films du Fleuve, Hobab, Film i Väst
World sales: New Europe Film Sales
Venue: Sarajevo Film Festival (Kinoscope)
In Dutch, French
100 minutes
