‘Silent Friend’ Review: Tony Leung and Léa Seydoux Share The SpotLight With Plants in a Rich and Strange Scientific Drama

IT’s Unclear If Hungarian Filmmaster Ildikó Enyedi Was Inspired by the Seminal 1979 Stevie Wonder Album, Journey through the secret life of plantsFOR HER LATEST ENIGMATIC FEATURE, Silent Friend. But She not only Could Have Used It Title As An Alternative To Her Own – She Manages to Capture the Music’s Trippy and Soothy Spirit, As Well As Sense OLIASHENTIVENTION Warm Natural Fragrance.

That doesn’t mean this two-And-a-half-hour arthous triptych about man, Nature, botany and brainwaves is easy to sit. at all all. But enyedi is a master style wholist whokhno to create a Ceteain mood, mixing visual poetry with Deadpan Humor, and Big Ideas with Quothyan Foiibles, in a Film. Both the Green World and One Another.

Premiering in Competition at Venice, Whose 82nd Edition has been Marked by Tough, Jarring Drams and Films About the Sorry State of the Planet, Silent Friend Conversely Dishes Out Positive Vibes and A Different, More Reassuring Perspective About Where We May Be Headed – Just As Long as We Start Listening to Nature As Much as.

Set at the Same German University Over Three Time Periods Spanning Two Centuries, The Plot, WHICH is more like a sketchpad of scenes and ideas, follows a trio of characters. Communicative Powers of Nature.

The Modern Story, WHICH TAKES PLACE DURING The 2020 Covid Crisis, Follows Tony (The Great Tony Leung Chui-Wai of In the mood for love), a respecated Neuroscientist from Hong Kong Who Finds Himself Loked Down on An Empty Campus After The Pandemic Hits. Unable to conduct his research, which tests the brainwaves of infants before they Speak, He Switches Subjects to Start Measuring Those Same Waves in an Old Gingko Tree.

That Tree, Which Was Planted Back in 1832, Becomes The Connet Tissue Literally, Biologically and Possibly Metaphysically, Between Tony and Two Scientists Who Preceded Him. One is Grete (Luna Wedler), A brilliant Student Who Becomes the FIRST FIMALE TO INTEGRATE The UNIVERSITY’S STUFFY SCIENCE DEPARTMENT AT THE END OF The 19th Century. The Other Is Hannes (Enzo Brumm), A DREAMER OF A PUPIL IN THE 1970S WHO TAKSES more INTERESTEST IN HIS HOUSEMATE, GUNDULA (Marlene Burow), Than His Classwork, Helping Helum. Windowsill.

Enyedi Shifts Between the Three Storylines at Will, SomeTimes Spending Several Minutes in One Only to Cut to Another for A Few Seconds and Ten Over to Third. AT FIRST This CAN BE A BIT Perplexing, Especialyly If You’re Searching for a Common Narrative Thread or For the Plots To Somehow Thicken. But at some point you just have to go with the flow and accept that in True True Triped-Out Fashion, The Movie Will Be Much More About the Journy than the Destination.

And that’s okay if you’re susceptible to enyedi’s Particular Brand of Filmmaking, Which She Honed Over Features Like My Twentiet Century and The 2017 Berlin Golden Bear Winner On Body and Soul. (The lesse Remembered about The Story of My WifeThe Better.) Exquisitely Shot (in this Case by Fellow Hungan Gergely Pàlos, Who Switches Between Crisp HD, Grainy 16MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMER-WHITE) Movies Somehow Feel Both Aesheticly Ephemeral and Sharply Crafted – A Contradification She Manages to Make Smoothly Colesce, Especialy in Tork.

Indeed, Silent Friend is very much about bringing together seemingly unrelated elements – Human voices with Muted Plants, the Advent of Photography with Speak to One Another, Perhaps Finding A Common Voice. We may be a lonely species, as the film’s Three Solitary Protagonists Seem to Suggest; The Lines of Communication Are Nonetheless Open If Willing to Listen to Listen More, Especialy to an Environment that Rarely Talks Back (Except, Perhaps, Here).

These Are Heady Ideas, and and Silent Friend Is Certainly a Brainy Film. But iso Pleasantly Unprettentio and at Times, Laced with Deadpan Humor, Such As in A Scene in WhoyDoux’s Botanist Cheerfully Offers to “Send Over Some Som Tree. Like Any Blossoming Garden, The Atmosphere Here Is Sexual Charged, SomeTimes in A Subtle Way, SomeTimes More Directly. But The Film Posits that sex is just another way for specialists to communicate in OUR Solital World, No Matter What Century We’re in.

The Director Thrives on the Tese Kinds of Connections, Planting Her Themes Like A Tree Whose Roots Spread Deaper and Wider As the Movie Progresses. If You’re Open to This Kind of Expansive Filmmaking, THEN Silent Friend Will Probably, Er, Grow on You, Culminating in Scenes that Crescendo with Swirling, Scientific Imagery Backed by a Resonant Score from Gábor Kereesztes An Kristóf Kelemen.

It ALSO HELPS ACTORS LIKE LEUNG CHIU-WAI AND The LUMINUS WEDLER Are Charming Enough That You Don’T Mind Watching Them Do Mundane Things, Like Wandering AVAND A DESERTED COLLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLEGLETER Guard (Sylvester Groth), or Photography Plants in a Studio from the Late-1800s.

The Latter Gig Is What Wedler’s Character Does to Pay The Rent After Her Host Family Kicks Her Out for Suppedly Being Too Promiscuos, Which She isn’t. Of the Three Stories in Enyedi’s Enigmatic Film, Grette’s Is By Far The MOST DRAMATIC, as wit with an early scene in a kind University. Her Snide Answers to Their Belittling Questions Are Smart and Iconoclastic, Setting The Stage for the Other Characters in the Movie Who Also Think Outside the Box.

That’s Perhaps The Best Way to Characterize Silent Friend: a movie that Thinks Outside the box, ProFFERING A World View that’s Open to New, Unusual Connections at A Time WHEN Many People Seem To Be Shutting Themselves Down. It’s Also Surely The FIRST FILLM IN HISTORY THAT MENTS ITS VARIUS SPECIES OF PLANTS IN THE END CREDITS ALONGSIDE The HUMAN CAST MEMBERS. Among Other Things in Enyedi’s Rich and Strange New Feature, the Director Slyly Proves that there are more Stars Out there is the ones of the one Walking the Red Carpet, if You Just Dig Dighhhhhhhh.