Silence Becomes You

I discovered great images in this movie - they show a stunning set and production design with tons of details, the colors are awesome and you can really experience the new technique of shooting digitally uncompressed in these aspects. The three actors are doing a good job and the story has some interesting complex layers to discover. The role of Alicia Silverstone might not be the one that some people expect here, but she offers a new side with a totally new look and far away from all that we're used to. The two sisters seem to live in a kind of a fairy-tale-world and this draws the attention of the viewer through the whole movie. If you like the impression of great pictures in a movie, then watch this one!

I caught the last 30 minutes of "Silence Becomes You" on cable and was intrigued enough to order the DVD. The DVD would have benefited from a director's commentary as the film is annoyingly vague at times (even to me) and I imagine that most viewers would welcome some clarification.

My favorable first impression was probably a combination of the great production design, the excellent acting for the camera direction, and the understated yet inventive editing. It was filmed in Lithuania in HD video (said to be the first feature film with 100% digital cinematography), a technique that allowed the production staff to see each days rushes immediately so they could make timely rewrite and re-shoot decisions.

"Silence Becomes You" was written and directed by Stephanie Sinclaire, the Associate Artistic Director of the internationally known Kings Head Theatre in London. Her stage background shines through the production as all three of her main characters are given a nice multi-dimensionality. They are all flawed yet to varying degrees sympathetic.

Take the assorted plot summaries and comments about this film with a certain grain of salt. It is about two 20-something half-sisters (if you credit certain statements and make an inference) who are still living together in the estate where they grew up. Alicia Silverstone plays Violet and Sienna Guillory plays Grace.

They have decided that Violet should have a baby and lure a roguish drifter named Luke (Joe Anderson) to the estate for the purpose of getting her pregnant. There is a fourth character, the house, which exercises a considerable hold and influence over the two women. This relationship is represented by frequent memory flashbacks to their father and their childhood. The two young actresses who play them as little girls (most likely chosen for their physical similarity to Silverstone and Guillory) are convincingly directed by Sinclaire and their frequent appearances give the film a lyrical quality.

As in Terrance Mallick's "Days of Heaven" (1978), the four principal characters represent the four elements; earth (the house), water (Violet), fire (Grace), and wind (Luke). The principal dynamic being how the least transitory element holds the three elusive elements in place. Most of the complaints about the film seem to center on Sinclaire's frequent misdirection, the viewer only knows what she wants you to know and when she wants you to know it. There does seem to be vagueness for the sake of vagueness, or at least in the service of introducing complexity to a relatively simple story. The girls have a degree of paranormal skills and there is a strong mental connection between them; qualities that their alchemist father (lead into gold is his metaphor for reproduction) went to great trouble to develop. Sinclaire violates the language of film with this and with her inconsistent flashback techniques; confusing the viewer about what is real, what is mystical, what is a dream, and what is simply a memory. So the film is unable to decide between being a ghost story or a psychological melodrama. Yet in the end all this stuff fits into the final explanation so as long as you get it there is little cause for complaint.

This is a must see for Silverstone fans, by far the best thing she has ever done. Helped by an excellent acting for the camera director and an quality ensemble she is quite impressive. To me her face has always seemed slightly off-balance, making her an excellent fit playing a character that is somewhat off-kilter.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child. Comment Comment | Permalink

Yes I am the type that reads the back of the DVD case but I never expected what I didn't get. I loved the images of the twisted fairy tale but, the movie seemed like someone had yanked a page out of a Gothic teenagers dreams. I did not understand what the title had to do with the story. It seems that the writer of the film scammed some imagery from Francesca Leah Bloch. This movie seemed to have jumped off the twisted pages of this woman's retelling of fairy tales in modern day terms. All the princesses are schizophrenic and the princes are handsome, screwed up and bipolar. Good luck if you can make sense out of this hodgepodge of victorian furniture, hippy rags and twisted sisters. Toward the end I did begin to understand the older sister and the description of obsession on the back of the box.

Silence Becomes You was most likely one of the worst movies that I have seen of all time. The cast did a wonderful job, however the plot was confusing and not very entertaining. The picture and quality of the movie overall was good, however the messy plot, and the confusing events don't make up for the time I lost watching the movie. If the events weren't so scrambled, and more was explained, I feel the movie could have been a hell of a lot more interesting. I watched the movie, sadly, three times, just to understand the little bit of sense in which I made of it, and honestly, the only way I would ever watch this movie again is if I were to get it for free, or if I was locked in a windowless room for the rest of my life with nothing else to do.

Silence Becomes You (2005)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Psychological thriller has Violet (Alicia Silverstone) luring a drifter (Joe Anderson) back to her house where she and her sister Grace (Siena Guillory) have some wicked plans. The two sisters appear to be trapped in the house by their child spirits and the drifter might have walked into a deadly game. The main reason for me recording this film was to see what Silverstone had been doing recently but unless you're a fan of hers then there's no real reason to watch this movie. I kept watching and watching hoping for something to make sense but it never did and the movie just kept getting more confusing as it went along. Even at the end of the flick I tried to make sense of what I had just watched and I still couldn't make head or tails out of it. I could pick this thing to death with various logical issues like how the two sisters aren't working and yet have everything they do but that would be pointless because there's one goof after another. The basic story of why the girl's need this drifter never makes any sense as it appears a big portion of the film was cut out leaving us with a big mess. The three actors turn in decent, if not good, performances but I'm not sure you can blame them too much since the screenplay offers very little. The thriller aspect of the film is never thriller and the erotic moments aren't any better. As Silverstone is still sticking by her "no nudity" clause, her sex scenes border on PG-rated as she always has her clothes on, which pretty much kills anything erotic. The complete film is a major mess from the start so it's best to stay clear or at least keep your fast-forward button near by.