Silent Land review – chilly comeuppance for picture-perfect tourists in Italian idyll
Polish director Aga Woszczynska’s methodical and incisive debut feature offers a painterly study of guilt, desire and class, rendered in sky blues, terracotta tiles and white-people nude fabrics. Through an account of a holiday on an Italian island that goes wrong for extremely blond Polish couple Anna and Adam (Agnieszka Zulewska and Dobromir Dymecki), the script explores the chasms of cultural disconnection that lie beneath the tourism-industry fantasy of free-moving people of EU nations gaily traversing the continent in search of jollies.
Anna and Adam arrive at the spacious, secluded villa they’ve hired and are miffed to find the pool they were looking forward to using is empty. They complain to the unctuous manager (Marcello Romolo) who makes excuses and negotiates with the couple to have it fixed as quickly as possible in order to avoid issuing any kind of refund. The visitors resume their routines of running together and shagging athletically, but the arrival of an Arab builder (Ibrahim Keshk) unbalances the equilibrium: partly because he starts using a noisy piece of equipment to fix the pool, and partly because his strikingly chiselled torso is seldom clothed, attracting Anna’s eye and piquing Adam’s jealousy. But a nasty random accident changes the whole picture, and the Poles are compelled to give statements to the police that aren’t quite backed up by the CCTV footage that saw everything.
Like Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure, which it resembles thematically though possessing less humour, Silent Land takes particular aim at male vanity, pride and the myth-making of heroism. When the accident happens, Adam does nothing more than stand at the side uselessly, gawping at the tragedy like a passing motorist on the road. Anna knows the truth, but is also aware of her own culpability in events, and clearly nothing will ever be the same for these two glossy, smug jerks.
Woszczynska’s astringent cruelty is quite bracing, but the film’s austerity is hard going over the long haul and could have done with being a little funnier – although I laughed aloud when one insensitive policeman took the opportunity in the middle of his enquiries to try to sell the couple a boat-ride around the island.
• Silent Land is released on 23 September in cinemas.