22/36
But Julie decides to keep quiet
Synopsis
Julie is a star at an elite tennis academy. When her coach comes under investigation and is suddenly suspended, all the club’s players are encouraged to speak out. Belgium’s official submission for 'Best International Feature Film' category at the 97th Academy Awards in 2025. This is not a good movie. That’s a nice enough story though. But the script could use some tweaking. It’s like they had a few scenes in mind and then worked around them.
Why is she silent?
There are a few good scenes (the one with the confrontation in the cafe comes to mind), but it’s not enough to keep this thing afloat. All the actors are at the top of their game. Especially the young tennis pro who plays Julie. She really does her best with the material she gives. But even that is not enough. There are just too many unanswered questions: What really happened between Julie and Jeremy? One moment she’s having a problem with the new trainer, and the next she’s only being trained by him (I mean, what the F..
There were shadows everywhere
anyway?) So, story-wise, it’s just a big FAIL! But here comes my biggest problem with this movie. This director just doesn’t know how to make a movie!! Framing is simple and wrong. No lighting. In one scene you can only make out two silhouettes talking to each other. He never engages in a scene between different subjects.
But for me it was annoying as hell
It was like they only had one camera available. Now maybe (and I’m just guessing here), he feels that this brings peace and tranquility to his film. And if you do decide not to have cuts in your film, then be sure to stay in mainframe and let us (the audience) watch and watch where we want/need to. No, this director decides for himself, we don’t need that information. So, in many scenes we see people talking to other people whose heads are (half) cut off or you can just make out half of their faces. What do they teach in today’s film school??!!Also, was this movie shot on an Iphone??!! When I saw that Nicolas Karakatsanis was the DOP on this, my mouth dropped!
And that’s good
He did get on the phone (pun intended) this one. Sometimes it was simply unwatchable. To me, this all boils down to one of 2 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 simply handled incorrectly. And I, as a paying customer, want more.
