Film

A Question of Silence (1982)

Director: Marleen Gorris

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Three strangers brutally murder the inoffensive manager of an Amsterdam boutique, but the case is less straightforward than it seems. Told in flashback via the investigation of a criminal psychiatrist brought in to certify insanity, the film convincingly shows the motive behind the killing as intolerable male oppression of various kinds, the twist in this thriller/courtroom drama being that the muggers - and their psychiatrist - are very ordinary women and their victim a man. The story is told with an astonishing assurance and visual flair that belie the small budget and debutant director Gorris' lack of experience. Her feminism is uncompromising, but of a disarmingly undogmatic kind. The result is at once accessible and deeply unsettling: the upbeat ending, for instance, has the male way of looking at the world literally laughed out of court, with a cathartic laughter that explodes out of the women's earlier silent isolation, and goes on echoing long after the film is over.

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