Final Rating: 3.5/5
Ed. note: read out original review of Julie Keeps Quiet by Jeff Bulmer from TIFF 2024.
Leonardo van Dijl’s Julie Keeps Quiet is one of the more meditative sports films out there. The titular Julie (newcomer Tessa Van den Broeck) is trying to stay focused on her skills and future as a tennis player while her club experiences some major turmoil. The first bit of turmoil is the suicide of fellow club star Aline (Tamara Tricot), and the second is the subsequent investigation of coach Jeremy’s (Laurent Caron) potential involvement in Aline’s death, as he is accused of having an inappropriate relationship with his player.
Julie, as the title says, remains silent about anything she might be able to contribute to the Hirondelles Club’s investigation into Jeremy. She was close to him. He played a very significant role in her life. In fact, she keeps in touch with him after the investigation starts. Her new coach Backie (Pierre Gervais) is a bit younger and initially someone Julie has no interest in learning from. A conversation with Jeremy reveals that Julie’s former coach also has a low opinion of Backie, despite them both giving her the same advice in one of the film’s few humorous moments.
Two of Van Dijl’s previous short films, Get Ripped and Stephanie, show a pattern of focusing on the internal cogs of an athlete—or, in Get Ripped’s case, a gym rat. In all three films, he’s able to find something potent to latch on to and observe, which is something his camera is very effective at doing. Van Dijl’s tendency to linger on shots and keep his camera stationary goes well with his films’ subject matter. It gives the viewer the time to digest and sympathize with his characters.
He even replicates a shot from Get Ripped in Julie Keeps Quiet where a character works out in front of a mirrored wall. Reflections are used quite frequently throughout this film, serving to both allow Van Dijl to capture more in a shot without the need to move the camera and direct the audience’s focus to the thoughts of the characters on screen.
Where Julie Keeps Quiet deviates from what one might expect given its plot is in how mundane most of it feels. She attends class, works with her fellow students on her German, and continues to push herself to be a better tennis player. The mundanity, combined with Van Dijl’s static camera, can sometimes make the film feel a little dry. What little rising and falling action takes place is further muted by how stoic Julie is. To Van den Broeck’s credit, she’s able to mine Julie’s reserved character as well as anybody could, saying a lot with her eyes and the subtle differences in her speech and delivery when talking to her friends as compared to her parents.
Tessa Van den Broeck is also a very competent tennis player. Over the years, sports films have struggled at times to convey all manners of sports in convincing fashion. More cinematic attempts at tennis like Wimbledon, King Richard, and Challengers often incorporate the camera movement into the kineticism of a scene. Anyone who watches sports knows that the camera doesn’t need to move a lot for the action on screen to be kinetic.
Julie, the rest of her club, and her opponents throughout the film all look like real tennis players playing real tennis to the extent that they likely didn’t need any (or much) training for those scenes. With one minor quibble aside—a sequence where Julie serves from the same side of the court on consecutive points—you’ll be convinced that all the tennis on screen is authentic.
Surrounding Julie as she tries to press on with her new coach are her friends Laure (Grace Biot) and Inès (Alyssa Lorette), her parents (Ruth Becquart and Koen De Bouw), and the director of the tennis club, Sofie (Claire Bodson). The script doesn’t put a lot of weight on these additional characters. It mostly uses them to let Julie know that she has shoulders she can lean on and ears that will listen if she ever wants to stop being quiet.
Julie flatly rejects this kindness far more often than not. It’s refreshing that a film with such weight hanging over it from start to finish would allow its protagonist to say no and let her come to things in a way that feels natural. Many films would be quick to jump to the more bombastic moments and fiery exchanges that could easily have been drawn from such a story, but Leonardo van Dijl doesn’t let his focus waver from Julie’s mental state and manner of processing the world around her.
Julie Keeps Quiet’s commitment to giving its protagonist as much space as she needs is its greatest attribute. The film succeeds in putting the viewer in Julie’s head as she navigates her world after such an upheaval. The ending is all the more affecting because of how much attention is given to Julie’s (oft repressed) emotions.
Thank you to Film Movement and Foundry Communications for the screener.
