Julie Keeps Quiet doesn’t have scenes; instead, the film is made up of fragments. The camera is static, and cuts almost always move the audience into the next piece of this collage of moments. There are no shot–reverse shot conversations, and the camera doesn’t follow characters’ movements through space. The closest the filmmakers offer to traditional cuts within a single period are cuts from close-ups to medium-wides, allowing us to see more characters, but they don’t adjust our angle, ensuring that we remain centered on the titular Julie (Tessa Van den Broeck in an astonishing debut performance).
All that technical precision may not matter to some viewers, but it makes itself felt whether it’s specifically noticed or not. The film is about this particular teenage girl and her experience; it’s not a social drama or a message movie, despite what its logline may lead us to believe. The premise—that a coach at Julie’s tennis club has been suspended and each member answers an investigator’s questions while Julie keeps quiet—could easily turn into something obvious and preachy. But the view director Leonardo Van Dijl offers keeps us always focused on the individual.
That focus allows us to see how Julie responds to new information, how she moves around different people, when she does and does not advocate for herself, and more. The choice to so tightly lock our perspective on her without placing us in her perspective forces us to consider the ways the adults in her life have failed to see her, functioning almost as a directive for us to pay attention to the young people in our lives and the way they communicate without speaking directly. 100 min.
Gene Siskel Film Center
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