A moneyed, entitled tourist couple are forced to confront their own moral bankruptcy during a luxury Italian vacation in Silent Land, the glacially assured debut feature from Aga Woszczynska. Expanding on themes and characters first seen in her 2014 short Fragments, which played in Cannes at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, the young Polish writer-director probes the fault lines of class, race and post-colonial guilt that underlie First World anxieties about migrants and refugees. World premiering at Toronto International Film Festival this week, this frosty Eurodrama casts a forensic eye on contemporary issues in a manner that recalls the work of Michael Haneke, Ruben Östlund, Michel Franco and other caustic cultural commentators.
Self-lacerating bourgeois confessional cinema has almost become its own subgenre in recent years, and can sometimes shade into banal hectoring. Having a public platform to performatively denounce one’s own privilege is arguably just another form of privilege, after all. Thankfully, Woszczynska maintains an impressively tight control over potentially preachy material, crafting a mostly gripping, subtle and suspenseful relationship drama. As a graduate of the feted National Film School in Lódz, alma mater of Polanski, Skolimowski, Kieslowski, Wajda and many more, she taps into a long tradition of cool observational detachment combined with technical rigour. Though a little overlong and underpowered in places, Silent Land is a strong debut whose newsworthy themes should help generate festival buzz and art-house interest internationally.
On the surface, life appears perfect for ice-blonde duo Anna (Agnieszka Zulewska) and Adam (Dobromir Dymecki), thirty-something Polish tourists renting a handsome holiday villa on a sunny Italian island. They have gym-toned bodies, wear tastefully understated clothes, drink fine wines and enjoy plenty of efficiently vigorous sex. But a cloud hangs over their dream vacation when they discover their swimming pool is not functional, pressuring their landlord to fix the problem urgently. He brings in Rahim (Ibrahim Keshk), an illegal immigrant from North Africa, to carry out the work. Communication is difficult, tinged with an undercurrent of casual racism and unspoken sexual tension: “just don’t yell at me like I’m stealing things”, Rahim tells an uncomprehending Anna during one vexed exchange.
When Rahim dies in a freak fall, it barely registers with Adam and Anna, their indifference cleverly mirrored by Woszczynska’s brisk, unsensational depiction of the accident. Only when they are called in for police interrogation does it dawn on the couple that their unruffled reaction to the tragedy could be seen as callous, even complicit. They began to fashion a false version of events to cast themselves in a better light, despite damning CCTV footage from the villa. Locals reassure them that they did nothing wrong, dehumanising Rahim in the process: “It’s absurd, he wasn’t even legal here.” Despite his obvious suspicions, the local police chief is eager to close the case, reassuring the tourists that “guests are always welcome in our town.”
Cautiously returning to their holiday pleasures, Adam and Anna befriend a local French couple who run a diving school on the island, Arnaud (Jean-Marc Barr) and his younger, pregnant wife Claire (Alma Jodorowsky). But as migrant issues hover just outside the frame, the Polish pair are consumed by gnawing guilt over Rahim’s death, both in directly personal terms but also at a deeper, more structural, socio-political level. Their relationship fractures into rancour and recrimination, which Woszczynska illustrates with subtly symbolic imagery, including some elegantly composed dream sequences. Low on dramatic incident, the film’s latter half meanders and loops a little, with stiff dialogue and underdeveloped secondary characters. But the quietly devastating final flourish has a poetic, almost Shakespearean quality.
In mood and tone, Silent Land flirts with the visual grammar of supernatural horror, murder mystery and revenge thriller. But Woszczynska resists any big melodramatic pay-off, opting instead for a scalpel-sharp anatomy of the moral vacancy that lurks behind the mask of bourgeois respectability. Worthy of mention is production designer Ilaria Sadun for framing these anguished lovers inside a pristine, airy, pastel-shaded luxury prison. Credit is also due to cinematographer Bartosz Swiniarski for maintaining a steady hum of subliminal dread with meticulously poised slow-motion zooms and panning shots. Though the setting is never specified, the Sardinian coastal locations are a bonus, rugged beauty tinged with elemental danger. Woszczynska elected not to use a musical score, fearing it would be too emotionally didactic, instead favouring a crisp formal austerity that pays pleasing stylistic homage to classic Polish cinema.
Director: Aga Woszczynska
Screenplay: Aga Woszczynska, Piotr Jaksa Litwin
Cast: Dobromir Dymecki, Agnieszka Zulewska, Ibrahim Keshk, Jean-Marc Barr, Alma Jodorowsky, Marcello Romolo
Producers: Agnieszka Wasiak, Giovanni Pompili
Cinematography: Bartosz Swiniarski
Editing: Jaroslaw Kaminski
Production design: Ilaria Sadun
Production companies: Lava Films (Poland), Kino Produzioni (Italy), I/O Post (Czech Republic)
World sales: New Europe Film Sales, Warsaw
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Platform)
In Polish, English, Italian, French
113 minutes
