21/31
But Julia chooses to remain silent
Synopsis
Julia is the star of an elite tennis academy. When her coach is investigated and abruptly suspended, all the players at the club are called upon to speak out. Belgium’s official entry for the “Best International Feature Film” category; 97th in the 2025 Academy Awards. This is not a good film. It’s a pretty good story, though. The script could use some tweaking, though. It’s as if they had certain scenes in mind and then just skipped them.
Why is she silent?
It has a few good scenes (one with the confrontation in the café comes to mind), but not enough to keep this thing afloat. All the actors are at the top of their game. Especially the young semi-tennis pro who plays Julia. He really does his best with the material he’s given. But even that’s not enough. There are too many unanswered questions: What really happened between Julia and Jeremy? One minute she’s having trouble with her new trainer, the next she’s going to be coached by only him (I mean, what’s the real F..?) So story-wise, this is just a big FAIL!
There were shadows everywhere
But here’s my biggest problem with this movie. This director just can’t make a movie!! The framing is right and wrong. The lighting is spot on. In one scene, you can only make out two silhouettes talking to each other. He never cuts a scene between different subjects. It’s like they only have access to one camera.
But it just made me uncomfortable
Now maybe (and I’m just guessing here) he thinks this brings peace and quiet to his movie. And if you decide not to have any cuts in the movie, definitely keep the keyframe and let us (the audience) look where we want/need. No, this director makes his own decisions, we don’t need this information. So in many scenes we see people talking to other people who have (half) their heads cut off or you can make out half of their faces. What do they teach in film school these days??!! This movie was also shot on an iPhone??!! When I saw that Nicholas Karakatsanis was the DOP, my mouth dropped!
And that’s fine
He actually called (word for word) on that phone. Sometimes it was just unwatchable. For me, it all boils down to one of two things: Either this director doesn’t know the basics of filmmaking, or he just doesn’t care. Maybe he just wants to tell his stories. But film is a visual medium. And here it was just handled poorly. And as a paying customer, I want more.