The journey towards speaking out of a young tennis player in a first feature film characterized by its remarkable rigorousness.
“The sentence wouldn’t take shape. The intention was there. It crashed into a void,” writes Christine Angot in Le voyage dans l’Est. Julie Keeps Quiet is this sentence, transposed into images. The film’s title doesn’t lie. Julie won’t speak. No words will come out of her mouth in the space-time of the film. The film closes until before they do.
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The young hope of a prestigious tennis club, Julie’s life is thrown into turmoil when her coach is suspended following the suicide of a student. Although the administration has set up time for club members to be heard, Julie refuses to participate in it.
The film deceptively appears to stand still, but does move forward gradually, perfectly in sync with its character. The film projects us into Julie’s mind, while at the same time rendering her cloistered daily life with chilling precision. Through its meticulous staging of space, the film sets up an unease, a zone in Julie’s consciousness that cannot yet be materialized through speech. Unlike many treatments of the difficult path towards speaking out, the film moves forward in a homogeneous block. The character’s progress is made in a straight line, transcribed in minimalist strokes, where suddenly the slightest subtle shift across the girl’s body crystallizes her revolt. Julie’s silence is anything but silent. It screams out in every shot.
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