‘Julie Keeps Quiet’ Review: Tennis Drama Muffles its Lead Instead of Challenges Her | London Film Festival

We don’t need to meet the elusive Jeremy to conclude that he is the Lydia Tár of tennis. A youth coach preparing the next generation for athletic glory, he’s also a figure whose negative reputation proceeds him – with the suicide of one of his former pupils, for which he’s suspended and placed under investigation, being the turning point that gets people to openly interrogate his position. But as you can deduct from the title of Leonardo Van Dijl’s Cannes Critics Week sensation – and Belgium’s submission for the International Film Oscar – the star player he’s currently molding to be the next big thing is refusing to join in with either the condemnation or the reclamation. 

Tessa Van den Broeck’s unknowable lead performance as Julie is often as frustrating as it is beguiling, although this is entirely by design. The problem with Julie Keeps Quiet is that it treats its protagonist more like a puzzle for the audience to solve than a character, with each conversation about her coach written and performed in a way that directly invites reading between the lines. Has she been hurt by him in similar ways? Does she know about other abuses but chooses to keep silent as she thinks it will otherwise halt her promising career? Or does she simply not know anything, and can’t comprehend how these allegations correlate with the man she knows as her coach, who she still has secret phone calls with every other day? Every naturalistic discussion between her and her classmates, family, or exasperated teachers investigating a case without any concrete allegations, is written with the intention of making you jostle between these alternate readings, never putting a case forward in either direction so much as it’s making you actively interpret what’s being left unsaid. 

During the early stretches of the drama, this approach is gripping. In the only comparison I will make with Challengers – which many other reviews have gone overboard with despite significant differences in tone and subject matter – Julie shares the all-consuming passion for the sport with Tashi Duncan, their obsession with success in that field being their singular driving motivation. It’s clear when we’re first introduced to her, miming hitting tennis balls by herself in an empty court after her morning practice was canceled; for all the ways we can interpret her actions, it’s impossible to subtract them from her relationship to the sport itself, and her hopes to forge out a place for herself in it. She’s driven by the idea of success, only beginning to reflect on this when a replacement coach starts letting her off the hook for transgressions her classmates would be punished for, because she’s regarded as the star pupil.

Julie is a fascinating character in this regard, but Van Dijl and co-screenwriter Ruth Becquart’s choice to make each of her decisions designed to be interpreted in one of three ways robs her of some richness; her inner machinations are less complex than they would like us to believe. This doesn’t stop several scenes having an impact in the moment – various conversations with teachers trying to get her to speak up in the hope that a concrete claim they can investigate will arise are expertly written and performed to divide opinion on their overall implications. But by the end it becomes clear these were all just puzzle pieces. There’s less interest in exploring the ramifications of Julie’s own experiences – including the mental toll of bottling up her emotions – than there is in trying to make viewers second guess them. It’s an unsatisfactory direction for a drama that on paper takes a unique, affecting approach to a hot-button issue. 

There is still much to admire with Julie Keeps Quiet, not least the silent feeling of dread which hangs over the film, which can only be cut through via swings of a tennis racket. But by the midway point, I felt that Van Dijl’s choice to leave us feeling like we’re on the opposite side of the court to his protagonist, a stronger barrier between us than a mere net, made the eventual emotional gut punch land with a whimper. There’s a powerful story in the bones of this movie; its quietness ends up working to its detriment. 

Grade: C 

This review is from the 2024 London Film Festival. Julie Keeps Quiet will be released theatrically in the U.S. by Film Movement in 2025.