The Quiet Room . Metro Pulse . 07-06-98

The Quiet Room

DIRECTED BY: Rolf de Heer

REVIEWED: 07-06-98

The Quiet Room (1996, PG) is an Australian film about a 7-year-old girl who stops talking as a protest against her parents' continual fighting. She's played by a striking young actress named Chloe Ferguson, who narrates almost the entire film by way of the girl's interior monologues. There's a fairy tale quality to the movie's construction—the characters are just named "Girl," "Mother," and "Father," and the pastel paints of the girl's bedroom lend an unreal feel—but not to its plot. Writer/director Rolf de Heer isn't interested in easy resolutions but in how children make sense of the perplexing and often disappointing real world. The parents aren't drawn nearly as well or as sympathetically as the girl, but that's a minor weakness in an engrossing film.

--Jesse Fox Mayshark

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