35/19
But Julia decides to remain silent
Narrative
Julia is a star at an elite tennis academy. When her coach is under investigation and suddenly suspended, all of the club’s players are encouraged to speak out. 97. In the category of the Academy Awards in 2025. This is not a good movie. It’s a nice enough story though. But the script could use some tweaking.
Why is she silent?
It’s like they have certain scenes in mind and then just skip over them. It has some good scenes (one with the confrontation in the coffee shop comes to mind), but not enough to keep this thing afloat. The actors are all at the top of their game. Especially the young semi-tennis pro who plays Julia. She really does her best with the material she provides. But that is not enough either. There are too many unanswered questions: What really happened between Julia and Jeremy?
There is no lighting
One minute she’s in trouble with the new trainer, the next she’ll only be trained by him (I mean, what’s the actual F..?) So story wise, this is just a big FAIL! But here is my biggest problem with this movie. This director just doesn’t know how to make a movie!! The framing is just and wrong. There were shadows everywhere. Only two silhouettes talking to each other can be distinguished in one scene. He never cuts the scene between different objects.
But it was just annoying to me
It’s like they only have access to one camera. Now maybe (and I’m just guessing here) he thinks it brings peace and calm to his film. And if you do decide not to have any cuts in the movie, be sure to keep the keyframe and let us (the audience) look where we want/need. No, this director decides for himself, we do not need this information. So in many scenes we see people talking to other people who have (half) severed heads or you can just make out half of their face. What do they teach in film school these days??!!Also this movie was shot on an Iphone??!! When I saw that Nicholas Karakatsanis was the DOP, my mouth dropped!
And that’s good
He actually called (word by word) that phone. Sometimes it was simply unwatchable. To me, it all boils down to one of two things: Either this director doesn’t know the basics of filmmaking, or he just doesn’t care. Maybe he just wants to tell his stories. But film is a visual medium. And here it was just mishandled. And as a paying customer, I want more.