Silence, like a cancer, grows in UN SILENCE.
The film begins with 50-something Astrid Schaar driving in her car. She is cocooned in the vehicle, moving through traffic, a clear agitation accompanying her. The rear view mirror is prominent, a motorcar metaphor of the past being in clear sight even as she drives into the future. It also gives the sense that the audience is a passenger in the car, riding with her on her journey.
Astrid is on her way to find out why her son has been arrested for the attempted murder of her husband, François, a prominent and media-savvy lawyer approaching a crucial point in his years-long, high profile case, in which he represents the parents of a number of abducted children.
But François harbours a dark secret. Darkness that old fiend has continued to walk with him, softly creeping, a perversion planted in his brain that still remains, whispered in the sounds of silence that has set quietly inside the family unit causing a disquiet between husband and wife.
Inspired by true events that shocked France and Belgium, UN SILENCE is a disquieting exploration of family duty, complicity and coercive control; and the sounds of silence that resonates with repercussions of their actions, past and present.
Emmanuelle Devos plays Astrid as an almost evaporated person, caught in a vacuum pack sealed off world instilled by her suave, secret harbouring spouse, François, played with a sangfroid arrogance by Daniel Auteuil.
Day and night, reporters wait outside their gated home, hoping to snap a photo and secure François’ latest take on the trial, little knowing the stakes are much higher, that their stakeout could deliver a sensational scoop.
But his notoriety over the case, his inherent hypocrisy and superior smugness triggers a figure from the family’s past to return, initiating their own search for justice, fuelling the already uneasy equilibrium of the household, eroding any further chance of silence.
