There are films that pass between the meshes of the media net despite their qualities, the audacity of their proposal and the love they are wearing. Simply presented as previews at international festivals before failing indifference on the dark download platforms, Speak No Evil is of that marble there. This horrific thriller revealed to the Sundance had literally upset Fantasia. If you have one horror movie to see before the nuclear winter, it's this one! We explain why it's heresy that Speak No Evil remained confined to small screens.
So much stress for politics' sake
Danish film directed by Christian Tafdrup, Speak No Evil starts with a simple scene of life as travelers know so much. On holiday in Tuscany, a Danish family meets a Dutch couple, Patrick and Karin, parents of a timid child. They exchange and then end up eating a piece together in the joy of travel meetings and the discovery of the unknown. Months later, the Danes received an unexpected invitation to visit the couple. Bjørn and Louise hesitate just as they know them. They finally decide to try the adventure no matter what. After all that would refuse such a courteous invitation in this rustic and rural setting promised by friendly hosts?
Against all expectations, once on the spot, the Danes still feel uncomfortable. While the welcome is often warm, some interferences and mischiefs of their hosts defy the rules of propriety... unless they are provocations. Speak No Evil is an essay on politeness, a home inverted invasion that, like Funny Gameswill immediately deprive the spectator of all hope. Tafdrup's feature film perfectly illustrates the expression « Getting into the wolf's mouth ». Like everything Home Invasion who respects himself, when we have opened the door of our private space abroad, how can we backtrack?
Especially well written and made, the film adopts a format close to the Cinérama that extends the field of vision to the screen. You feel as close as you can to Bjørn and Louise, as the echelon of courtesy tightens up until you take them hostage and make them victims of their own code of values. The will of this couple all that is more ordinary will be tested until the verdict. Speak No Evil constantly reverses the burden of the executioner's fault to his victims with unbearable lightness.
You must admit, you believe this on yourself
Ice from beginning to end, Speak No Evil knows how to guide our emotions with modesty. Christian Tafdrup does not hesitate to make our characters speak in English, Danish and Dutch, even though sometimes deliberately choose not to translate a few small breakthroughs that we imagine petty into Dutch, of which to amplify the incomprehension. In Speak No Evil, it is around the table that we exchange and explore the limits of propriety. It's all about social territory. It is not annoyed if it is at the detour of a meal that malaise (longtime in deafness) ends up grunting more beautiful. After all, what is more codified than a dinner, a theatre ideal for transgression.
Many films have tried to imitate Haneke without matching the original material. Much like Family Dinner execute the formula without succeeding in unblocking the gender, even forgetting to build their identity. By reinventing the Home Invasion, Speak no Evil differs from his peers by this psychological tension on the razor wire up to the apotheosis. With his impeccable achievement, Christian Tafdrup is a blissful man of our relationship to each other and to the aberrations of politeness. More bitter than Funny Games, Speak No Evil is a film that disturbs by its realism and the Gaussian blur that it constantly maintains on the eruption of violence. An irreverent work and instant classic that violates our free will by flirting boldly with gender codes. Did the student pass the master?
Trailer of Speak No Evil
Thanks for this review that makes you want to rush into a dark room to see the movie!
[...] Speak No Evil is an essay on politeness, a reverse home invasion that, like Funny Games, will immediately deprive the spectator of all hope. Tafdrup's feature film perfectly illustrates the expression « Getting into the wolf's mouth ». Like any Home Invasion that respects itself, when we have opened the door of our private space abroad, how can we backtrack? A glacial film that probably dethrones Haneke by its power and elegance of raw staging. A masterpiece of the genre to be reserved for an informed audience and a film sadly condemned to VOD despite its presence in Sundance and Fantasia. [...]
After I recommended it, I had to wait until early 2024 to finally discover "Speak No Evil" (retitled "Don't Say Nothing") thanks to his arrival on Paramount+... And as you say so well in the article, I was blown up by this Haneke manipulation game which produces a stifling tension from the first planes (these eye connections that taaaaaar to arrive, it's horrible ^^). On the other hand, I was less convinced by some inconsistencies (see the story of the rabbit or several elements of the end)... Not a very nice film, thank you for recommending it and sad a little for not having been able to discover it in the theater.