Julie Keeps Quiet Review

Julie Keeps Quiet focuses on Julie (Tessa Van den Broeck), an incredibly talented tennis athlete who trains in an elite tennis academy on a scholarship. When her club is overtaken by a tragedy that sees a former athlete commit suicide, her coach, Jeremy (Laurent Caron), falls under investigation and is temporarily suspended. While most of the athletes keep training under an alternative coach, all of them are pressured into talking about their working relationship with Jeremy, especially Julie, who was particularly close to him as the star pupil of the academy.

From the opening scene, the film introduces us to the main character playing tennis, which proves to be the heart of this story. It also introduces us to the overall realism of the movie. Echoing the style of the Dardenne brothers, who served as producers on this film, Julie Keeps Quiet does not take us into another world for this story but is grounded in the reality of its narrative. The camera often lingers on Julie in ordinary moments when other films would have instead cut a lot earlier, thus truly introducing the audience to Julie’s daily life, with its repetitiveness and realism.

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I found it especially interesting that the film is not structured like a thriller or mystery into what actually happened or whether the allegations against Jeremy’s role in this tragedy are true or not. Instead, the movie focuses on the main character and the main character only, rather than exploring the toxic relationship she may have had with her coach or the abuse athletes unfortunately often go through. After all, the title is already telling us this: Julie keeps quiet. From the moment the film begins, we know Julie is going to keep quiet as the investigation, or her role in it, is not the focus of the film. Instead, the focal point of the entire story is Julie, her relationship to tennis, and how she manages to remain true to herself in a world that pushes her to do something she may not feel quite ready for.

At the same time, through the character of Julie – and, especially, through her silence – the movie does deliver a poignant reflection on the toxic relationships that may form between coaches and athletes. This feels particularly relevant today when we often hear of such cases in real life, and in many different sports, as it remains a very real problem many young athletes face in these competitive environments. The story also raises a very interesting question on the economic side of sports, which is particularly relevant when it comes to a sport like tennis. While this remains an undertone more than anything else, it touches upon it in a very fascinating way that allows us to ponder the questions of privilege and money in sports.

The use of sound is also very unique. At the beginning of the film, we only hear the diegetic sound of Julie in her element, playing tennis with no use of music that is not coming from inside the world. However, that is not true for the entirety of the film. In some of the most emotional parts, Julie’s narrative is accompanied by non-diegetic music instead. While the soundtrack itself is beautiful, I don’t think it necessarily works within the context of this film. The music almost seems to guide our emotional response rather than accompany it, and also somewhat out of tone with the rest of the film and its realism.

Overall, Julie Keeps Quiet is a very well-made film. Not only is the topic incredibly relevant to today’s situation in the sports world, but the style in which van Dijl tells the story is especially unique and fascinating to watch. This may be the director’s feature film debut, but it does establish his style particularly well and inevitably makes the audience look forward to his next movies.