Julie Keeps Quiet: Film Review
Julie Keeps Quiet was Belgium’s entry for the International Feature Film Oscar but it was unfortunately not nominated. The competition was admittedly fierce this year, but it’s a real shame because this psychological drama is very good.
The film follows 15-year-old tennis star Julie (real-life tennis ace Tessa Van den Broeck) who faces pressure to speak up after her coach Jeremy is suspended after bosses discover new information about his coach-student relationship with a girl who just died by suicide. As Julie’s his star pupil and they spent many hours training together, everyone assumes that Julie knows or experienced something. However, she refuses to be interviewed as part of the academy’s investigation into the allegations.
Julie Keeps Quiet, directed and co-written by Leonardo Van Dijl, is an effective, well-written film that shows how hard it is for sexual abuse victims to speak up. Julie just wants to keep her head down and focus on getting into the Belgian Tennis Federation (BTF) rather than sticking her neck out. She keeps her cards close to her chest and doesn’t give anything away – beyond her reluctance to speak – and seems to be trying to pretend nothing ever happened.
The film is low-key and understated. We mostly just follow Julie as she quietly goes about her days at school, at training and at home while the investigation is rumbling on in the background. We are given very little information about the situation but we can infer a lot and let our imagination do the rest. This is Julie’s film – we only see Jeremy (Laurent Caron) in a couple of scenes, and his sparing screen time makes his appearances mean more.
Slowly but surely, Julie becomes more tense and wound up and her mental state affects her tennis performance. You can see her internally wrestling with the idea of speaking up more and more, but she has to get there in her own time instead of her hand being forced. It blew my mind when I found out this was Van den Broeck’s debut acting role because her performance is so natural and subtle.
Julie Keeps Quiet has gone straight into my top 5 of the year and it’s going to take a lot to change that. I cannot recommend it enough.
In cinemas from Friday 25th April