Alicia Veliz – Guest Writer
(Mild spoilers ahead)
The Bay of Silence is a thriller based on the novel of the same name by Lisa St. Aubin de Teran.
Rosalind (Olga Kurylenko of Quantum of Solace) is a beautiful French artist that is proposed to by Will (Claes Bang of Netflix/BBC Dracula series) during a getaway to The Bay of Silence, which is one of two bays located in the small resort town of Sestri Levante on the coast of the Italian Riviera.
The couple seem to be genuinely in love and as we fast forward eight months to see that Ros is pregnant. But as they are moving into a new home tragedy strikes and she suffers a serious fall. As luck would have it both mother and baby survive, but Ros starts acting extremely peculiar afterwards and it leads her poor, hopelessly-in-the-dark husband down a rabbit hole so deep and confusing that it throws off the audience as well.
Not only is the storyline all over the place but, without revealing too much, there is a certain event that takes place involving the baby that has absolutely nothing to do with the main plot and just leaves the viewer with a very cringey feeling during those sequences.
The plot ends up resting on that basic thriller trope of using mental health as a plot device. Ros’ character suffers from a severe mental illness which she developed due to a traumatic event that she suffered in her early teens. My main problem here with the highlighting of the mental illness is that I thought it felt extremely out of place that her mother, played by Alice Krige, had never revealed to her son-in-law the fact that her daughter needed daily medication to keep the illness at bay. I mean come on, no wonder the poor guy was hit for six when Ros did the 180 degrees on him.
Your journey during the film is a very hazy, convoluted ride. I also felt that actors of the caliber of Krige and Brian Cox were grossly underused and with better scripting could have added the extra umph that this thriller needed. However, it is passable and the actors with special props going to Bang and Kurylenko for giving maximum effort to a script with a lot of potential but had way too many atmospheric layers that did not seem to mesh until the very last few minutes of the film. This film needed a bit of refinement and the ending still leaves too many questions unanswered.
So, if you want to give this one a whirl, just do not go into it expecting too much. But if you happen to be big fans of Olga and Claes it is a fair watch.
If you get a chance to watch it let me know what you think in the comments. And if you enjoyed my review please do not forget to click the like button to show your support.
Rating: 5.5/10
For my review of Polish thriller The Hater you can click here.