Mark Reviews Movies: THE BAY OF SILENCE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 13, 2020

Everyone's motives and sense of morality seem questionable in The Bay of Silence. It's not entirely clear if screenwriter Caroline Goodall intended for us to question so much about this story.

Take one of the movie's early scenes, in which a new husband watches as his pregnant wife leans on the railing of a balcony in their recently purchased home. The man knows that this railing is loose. He was just up on that balcony, and now, he's playing with his new stepdaughters and staring at his wife, taking a photograph of the happy scene and starting to put her weight on the uncertain metal. Director Paula van der Oest captures the husband's face in close-up, and on that face, there's the obvious knowledge of the railing's condition and some apparently decided hesitation. This look doesn't seem like worry. It appears, instead, to be anticipation.

The big question, of course, is the filmmakers' intentions in this scene. The fact that something so fundamental about our protagonist is such an open question doesn't bode well for the rest of this story, which is all about people hiding their real natures and secrets from the past. Is Will (Claes Bang), the husband, just momentarily paralyzed with fear for what might happen to his wife, or in some way that he knows or doesn't fully understand, is he secretly hoping that she'll fall?

Based on everything that follows in this story, the first option is probably the correct one, but why, then, is there even a question about his character in this moment? Is it the screenplay, based on Lisa St Aubin de Terán's novel, setting up the possibility that Will might have some darker impulses, only to drop them once the real plot takes over? Is it just an unforced error on Van der Oest's part, unintentionally imbuing the scene with a sense of quiet menace through the timing and the editing? Is it that Bang's performance simply doesn't communicate the appropriate reaction for the character in the scene?

In the big picture, focusing on this isolated scene, which ultimately means nothing for the rest of the story (The wife falls but gives birth without any immediate complications), is probably pointless. It does, though, become a running concern for the rest of the movie, which speeds through, overlooks, or dismisses key elements of the characters and its plot. It happens with such consistency that relationships are often unclear, the characters' actions sometimes feel uncertain, and the story seems divided into too many threads to really determine which one is actually important.

After Will's wife Rosalind (Olga Kurylenko) gives birth to their son, she begins to suffer from what appears to be post-partum depression. Will, busy with work, notices but believes everything will be fine.

One day, after nights of sleepwalking and being convinced that her new baby's twin was stolen from the hospital, Rosalind disappears with the kids and their nanny (played by Shalisha James-Davis). Shortly after, Will receives an anonymous package, mailed from a small village in Normandy and containing an old camera case. He drives to the town from London, where he discovers his stepdaughters acting strangely, the nanny missing, and his wife locked away in a decrepit house by the shore.

Something has gone horribly wrong. Even after that, Will learns that there's a lot about his wife that she and others have kept hidden from him.

The driving force of the rest of the plot has Will determined to protect his wife, whose mental health issues are far more serious than he first imagined. The way the movie treats this as a twist and then uses it to transform Rosalind into a distressed damsel is rather unfortunate. That's especially true, considering how the dual mysteries of this story—what happened in that house and what happened to Rosalind in the past—revolve entirely around her (The character is reduced to little more than a prop by the end, to be passed around by men with their own honest or twisted ideas about saving or "saving" her).

Other characters here include Rosalind's mother (played by Alice Krige), who exists to fill in Will's gaps of knowledge about his wife, and Milton (Brian Cox), Rosalind's stepfather who wants to make sure she's taken care of financially and has the connections to keep at least one apparent crime quiet. There are others, following or being chased by Will in order to provide more information. Much of this story is ultimately a hunt for exposition.

There is a story of genuine pain and trauma at the heart of The Bay of Silence. If the movie had cared about its characters beyond just people who exist to look for and state information, that story might have mattered.

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