Speak No Evil 2024 Movie Review
People are at their most disingenuous when trying to be polite, like saying a hideous hairstyle suits someone or their bum doesn’t look big in that dress. Most likely, the worst instance is meeting people on holiday and agreeing to stay in touch with no intention of doing so.
On holiday in Tuscany a Danish family, Bjørn (Morten Burian), Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch) and Agnes (Liva Forsberg), meet a Dutch family, Patrick (Fedja van Huêt), Karin (Karina Smulders) and Abel (Marius Damslev), a boy born without a tongue. A few months later, the Danes receive a postcard from the Dutch inviting them for a weekend at their holiday house in Holland.
At first things are fine, Patrick and Karin are welcoming enough although Agnes is a little out of sorts with Abel being unable to speak and her sleeping arrangements being less than accommodating. On the second day, small cracks appear as Patrick is openly rough with Abel, as well as mocking Louise’s vegetarianism. But things are about to get a lot worse for them.
Unsurprisingly, Speak No Evil is one those films that has you watching through your fingers, not from horror but at the relatable awkwardness of it all. This third feature from Christian Tafdrup might be too dark for its purported satirical bent to notice, from there being little to actually laugh at; a few moments elicit a wry giggle at the temerity of the characters otherwise this is 98 minutes of sheer discomfort.
Taking the slow burn route, Tafdrup plays a steady hand despite the audience going into this with a sense of dread; even if one approaches this blind, it is not hard to see where this is going, it is how bad it is going to get that is the hook. If this were a straight up satire, Patrick and Karin could just be extraordinarily boring driving Bjørn and Louise to murder, but Tafdrup has other, nastier ideas.
Ironically, the target for mocking is social politeness, with a distinct line drawn between the personalities of the Dutch and the Danes – the latter are portrayed as mild mannered and reserved, the former tend to let it hang out more and stand less on ceremony. I don’t know if this is a lazy stereotype or a keen observation – you could do this with the English and Americans I suppose.
For that reason, there will be many viewers relating to how Bjørn and Louise take their roles as guests very seriously, keen not to be presumptuous about how comfortable they can be in Patrick and Karin’s home; not that they are uptight – they do have sex later on in a rare moment of caprice. All things considered, Bjørn and Louise put themselves at their host’s mercy – unfortunately, quite literally.
Beginning in Italy, the first meeting is innocuous enough, with Patrick asking Bjørn if he can take an empty sun lounger next to him. They meet again in the town square after Agnes loses her toy rabbit and Bjørn goes to find it; Patrick is in awe at this, calling Bjørn “heroic”. They have lunch, where Louise reveals her vegetarianism (but also eats fish, a point Patrick picks ups on later) whilst Patrick tells them he is a doctor.
Jump forward to some months later and having forgotten about their fellow Dutch holidaymakers, the invitation to Bjørn and Louise it is met with some derision. Seeking advice from friends, the conclusion is “What is the worst that could happen?”. For the viewer, the red flags are already up but when the Danes arrive at the holiday house, its remote location should have sent alarm bells ringing.
Very discreetly, the masks begin to slip but we still don’t know what the end game is or the motive for it – if there is one. The first seeds are sown when Patrick and Karin invite their guests to dinner leaving the kids with an Arab babysitter Muhajid (Hichem Yacoubi) who doesn’t speak English (the common ground language the dialogue is mostly in). At the dinner, Patrick orders a feast then manipulates Bjørn into paying for it!
Everything is simply uncomfortable for the first hour, the only time Tafdrup deliberately freaks us out is when Abel confronts Bjørn and opens his mouth, revealing his lack of a tongue. In the context of expecting something to happen yet having your guard down, this is an efficacious outré of a scene, from being so pregnant with meaning which we discover much later on to our absolute horror.
With this now in mind, Tafdrup blends the creepy and suggestive with the openly nasty – from Patrick leering through the window at the bonking couple to his abusive approach to parenting. Karin is the secret weapon however, utterly undetectable as a malevolent force from being the one to defuse the tense situations and apologising for her husband, with the odd hint she isn’t completely innocent. Of all the hands Tafdrup plays here, this characterisation is the most genius.
Nothing makes sense when trying to analyse the whys and wherefores of the story, other than to suggest speaking out is actually the right thing to do and social etiquette be damned. When asked why he is torturing the Danes, Patrick nonchalantly responds “Because you let me”. Tafdrup shows a deft skill in surreptitiously getting under our skin through subtle imagery and subverting familiar scenarios, letting the tension build nicely, save for one moment where the music accompaniment gave the shock away.
Like their characters, the cast leave themselves at the mercy of Tafdrup’s devious mind, responding by delivering wonderfully modulated performances that reveal the worst of people on both sides of this torturous saga. Unless Tafdrup had a bad experience with a holidaying acquaintance, we might wonder if there was a nicer way he could have point his across, but then it might not be so memorable or provocative as Speak No Evil is.
