(Rated M, Running Time 93 minutes)

Writer and Director — Rolf de Heer

Born in Holland in 1951 but moved to Australia when he was eight. He worked at the ABC for seven years before applying to Australia’s prestigious Film Television and Radio School. He graduated after three years with diplomas in Production and Directing. His first film was a children’s feature and was both a critical and commercial success, Tail of a Tiger (1984). His second film was produced in 1987 entitled, Incident at Raven’s Gate. The film again was a success and sparked a number of offers from Hollywood. His next film Dingo, was made famous by the appearance of jazz legend Miles Davis in his only film role. His next film was probably his most notorious piece of work, Bad Boy Bubby, which ‘pushed the boundaries of both form and content in low budget filmmaking’. The film was made for $750 000 and used 32 different cinematographers. Bad Boy Bubby won the Grand Special Jury Prize and the International Film Critics Prize at the 1993 Venice Film Festival and numerous other awards in Australia.

Producer — Domenico Procacci

Procacci attended the Gaumont School of Cinema in Rome from 1981 to 1984, studying film direction and screen writing. Bad Boy Bubby was Procacci’s first non-Italian feature, he also produced de Heer’s 1995 film, Epsilon.

Director of Photography — Tony Clark

Won an Emmy in 1993 for Outstanding Achievement in Single Camera Photography for his work on the Disney Channel documentary "Great Wonders of the World — Wonders of Nature". The same year, he was awarded an Australian Cinematographers Society Gold Award for Specialized Cinematography for the time-lapse film Winter. Clark also worked on de Heer’s 1995 feature Epsilon.

Editor — Tania Nehme

Was nominated for an AFI Best Editor Award for her work on the short drama Once In Time. The Quiet Room is Nehme’s second feature; she was also an editor on de Heer’s Epsilon.

Production Design - Fiona Patterson

Worked on four films with de Heer principally in the areas of art and production.

Composer - Graham Tardif

Has worked on every feature film made by de Heer.

Art Director - Beverly Freeman

Worked on Bad Boy Bubby and Epsilon.

Sound Designer - Peter Smith

Worked on Incident at Raven’s Gate and Dingo.

Mother — Celine O’Leary

The Quiet Room is O’Leary’s third film with director Rolf de Heer; she also acted in his second film, Incident at Raven’s Gate and in the acclaimed Bad Boy Bubby. She began her career as a theatrical actress and has appeared in many productions for The Stage Company and The State Theatre Company of South Australia.

Father — Paul Blackwell

A regular on the state theatre circuit of South Australia, The Quiet Room was Blackwell’s third feature film following On Our Selection and I Own the Racecourse.

Girl Age 7 — Chloe Ferguson

No prior feature film experience.

Girl Age 3 — Phoebe Ferguson

No prior feature film experience.

US — 21^st March 1997

Australia — 15^th May 1997

Fox

Urban Cinefile interview with Rolf de Heer in regards to The Quiet Room can be found at —

http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/scripts/cinefile/Interviews.idc?Article_ID=199

Interview with Rolf de Heer on the home page —

http://www.flf.com/quietrm/about.htm

http://www.netau.com.au/gregking/f339qui.htm

http://www.eonline.com/Reviews/Facts/Movies/Reviews/0,1052,45595,00.html

http://www.flf.com/quietrm/index.html

http://www.filmscouts.com/scripts/film.cfm?Film=qui-roo

http://www.canoe.ca/JamMoviesReviewsQ/quietroom.html

http://chicagotribune.com/fun/flicks/movies/archive97/9705300428.htm

http://reviews.imdb.com/Title?0117422

http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/article_view.asp?Article_ID=198&Section

http://www.movie-reviews.com/quietroo.htm

http://www.cinemax.com/reviews/quiet_room.shtml

http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_04.03.97/film/files.html

http://www.njo.com/marquee/reviews/0321quiet.html

http://www.boxoffice.com/cgi/getreview.pl?where=Name&filename=All&terms=THE+QUIET+ROOM

http://www.film.com/film-review/1997/9299/109/default-review.html

http://www.flf.com/quietrm

1996 Cannes Film Festival (World Premiere)

1996 Toronto Film Festival

1996 Fort Lauderdale Film Festival

I was very surprised with the amount of literature I found on-line. Based on the fact that I had never heard of the film before I started this assignment I thought that I would struggle to find two or three review pieces on it but I found over 20. I was also surprised that the film had a home page, which assisted me with some very useful information. I found the homepage on the production company, Fine Line Features, site. Because of the relative obscurity of this film I was unable to obtain any box office figures for the film.

I found the Movie Review Query Database an amazing assistance. That is basically where I got all the information about the film. There were also a few links from selected review that were also very helpful.

Part 2:

The Quiet Room is the story of a young girl, Chloe Ferguson, so traumatised by her parents constant bickering and fighting that she refuses to speak. The film involves only four main actors, all of whom are not given names. They are simply known as Mother, Father, Girl Age 7 and Girl Age 3.

The plot is centred on the thoughts and emotions of the girl, which has the effect of making the audience feel enormous sorrow and sympathy for her. This is what makes the film so engrossing to watch, as the sensitive viewer feels compelled to keep watching to make sure the girl is all right. The film follows the deterioration of the parent’s relationship and how this effect’s the girl. At first their relationship seems fairly stable, however as the film progresses we are shown numerous examples of the dysfunctionality of their relationship.

The most disturbing moments of the film involve domestic violence and the evident devastating effects this has on the child. The brilliant acting of seven year-old Chloe Ferguson was instrumental in portraying this. Her sadness, in particular her crying, was so real that it was disturbing. Another tool used successfully by de Heer throughout the film was the use of art to express the emotions of the girl. This is in fact the method used by the girl to finally express in words how they make her feel.

The entirety of the film is set at the family house for with the majority of scenes filmed in the girl’s bedroom, which is painted a bright, almost fluorescent blue. De Heer commented that this was probably the most important issue, in terms of the look and feel of the film. The original colour was yellow but this was soon discarded, as there was insufficient differentiation between the background and the main characters and that it was, ‘a little too strongly rooted in conventional suburbia to make us think about our own lives in a different way.’

Despite the lack of scene changes in the film the viewer is kept interested by the internal monologue of the girl, which throughout the film seems to pass judgement on the lifestyle of adults as seen through a child’s eyes. Her interpretation of the world and the events happening around her are the feature of this film. We are essentially given an insight to the mind of a small child, coming to terms with the strange world she finds herself in. This is another avenue de Heer has used to encourage overwhelming feelings of sympathy for the young girl. On many occasions she is portrayed as the adult in the family, displaying a higher level of rational thought in comparison to her parent’s immature arguments.

Throughout the film the viewer is shown close-ups of the girls face during bouts of her parents fighting. The close-ups of her face are accompanied by her voice over, informing the audience of her thoughts at the time. Her face is full of anguish and pain, helping to reinforce to the viewer the devastating emotional effects of her parents failing relationship. With the majority of the film set in one bedroom, there isn’t much opportunity for creative cinematography. The most creative piece of cinematography occurs when the girl is watching her parents talk through the windows of a door. The windows are stain glass and the girl begins to watch through the clear coloured window, which she comments, ‘makes everything look all teary’. The second window is an ocean blue colour, which she describes as making everything look cold and sharp. Finally she settles on observing through the red coloured window because everything feels warm and happy.

Another unforgettable visual from the film was a scene involving a Barbie wedding. The girl dresses and neatly arranges all her Barbies for the wedding. In the background we hear her parents begin to fight again and the camera starts to focus on the faces of the Barbies and then slowly zooming out. This illustrates the contrast between the fantasy world and the real world. The fantasy world of a child involving characters with permanent smiles engraved on their faces, contrasted with the real world with people facing real problems and real issues.

The film seems to constantly challenge conventional modes of parenting. One would be excused for thinking that director Rolf de Heer was the principal of an alternative school. The film is shown to encourage the role of imagination in children and displays children’s drawings as valid pieces of expression. A central theme of the film seems to be that the level of intelligence in children is underrated, and that too often the wishes or thoughts of a child are neglected.

Her ability to read the body language of her parents is also an aspect of the film that de Heer wanted to emphasise. He explained, ‘I do remember quite strongly feeling that adults underestimate the way children think and that I must never forget that, so that when I became an adult I wouldn’t make the same mistake.’ Without doubt this is the most pleasing aspect of the film. The thoughts of a little girl, confused, sad and afraid for her parents. She displays wisdom beyond her years; at times she is portrayed as the adult of the film with her parents seen as behaving more like children.

I found the film to be an intensely emotional experience. The vast array of emotions the girl goes through makes it at times painful to watch. I found the second viewing of the film extremely difficult even though I thoroughly enjoyed the first viewing. I think films that achieve these extreme emotions in the viewer are incredible films. I believe that this is one of the functions of film in society, the artificial creation of certain emotions that are very hard to achieve in reality leaves the viewer feeling somewhat satisfied. Or if not hard to achieve people don’t ever want to experience such emotions in reality. Throughout the film I was constantly making comparisons between the girls experiences and my own childhood experiences. I watched the film with a friend who said afterwards that she was also doing the same throughout. To say that The Quiet Room is a powerful film is an understatement.

The critical uptake of the film at the time of its release was fairly positive. Its world premiere was at the prestigious 1996 Cannes Film Festival, which indicates that was thought of very highly amongst critics. It also screened at the Toronto Film Festival. Most of the reviews of the film were very positive. They particularly heaped praise on the amazing performance of seven year-old Chloe Ferguson; one critic described her performance as easily the best performance by an actor under ten in a leading role in a feature film. The film was praised for its originality in relation to the audible internal monologue of the girl. However some critics were critical of the girl’s social commentary, which at times was considered to be a bit too intelligent for a child of her age.

Many critics were also commented on the ending of the film, which they believed was rather abrupt. In the second last scene the girl finally speaks after handing a drawing she did to her parents, saying, ‘this is how you make me feel’. In the next scene, which is also the last scene, she is singing and dancing because they are about to go on a trip to the country, something the girl talks about regularly in the film. Some saw this as too much of a fairytale ending, contrasting with the darkness of the film up to that point.

The development of a script for The Quiet Room only came about because of the lengthy delay on finance approval for de Heer’s next film Epsilon. De Heer wrote the script for the film in eight weeks. The film was shot over five weeks in Adelaide, South Australia and on a very low budget due to the minimal amount of actors and only one setting.

De Heer spoke of the difficulties of working with such a young actor who was involved in virtually every scene. He said, ‘If there was a scene where she is bright and joyful, we would always do that in the morning. If there was a scene where she is unhappy or tired, we always did that in the afternoon’. The two adult actors were fantastic throughout the filming, said de Heer, playing and devising games with Chloe to help keep her happy and interested.

I was unable to find precise details of the release of the film except for the fact that it had its world premiere at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. Its Australian release date was the 15^th May 1997.

Rolf de Heer has an immense interest in childhood and the issues surrounding it, which is reflected in many of his other feature films. His first film, Tail of Tiger (1984), was a children’s feature, while his acclaimed 1993 film, Bad Boy Bubby, was about a childlike man locked away from the world by his grotesque mother. De Heer describes his fascination with childhood like this, ‘I’ve travelled in the world as a child… even more so now that I have children of my own. They are a source of endless fascination, insight and inspiration, and, to me, childhood is the most precious of all things.’

Most of the other members of the crew were relatively inexperienced in feature film production; however, most went on to work with de Heer for his next film.

In terms of using this film as a guide to the general position of Australian film and it’s value, I think it could be said that this film is only an indication of the strength of the Australian film industry. The film was made on virtually no budget, the script was written in eight weeks, the lead actor was a seven year-old girl in her first film, the two supporting actors had limited feature film experience yet the film was invited to screen at the prestigious 1996 Cannes Film festival. The number of positive reviews the film received around the world is also testament to this fact.

Situating the film in relation to Australian national cinema, as a medium sized English language cinema, is an extremely difficult task. Due to the fact that the film is recognized as a quality art house production, yet it was given very little exposure and publicity. This could be due to the issues dealt with in the film and the intensity with which they are dealt with. The intensity of the film is in contrast with the ethos that seemingly surrounds traditional Hollywood cinema, that of, cinema as entertainment. Quality art house productions like The Quiet Room, whilst seeking to entertain the audience, do so on a much deeper level. The film entertains by challenging the viewer to situate him or herself in the life of the girl. It challenges the viewer to feel what she feels, which many traditional Hollywood type audiences would be unprepared to do as it when then lose it’s entertainment value.