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Marleen Gorris Trilogy -- A Question of Silence/Broken Mirrors/The Last Island
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Cult Epics Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (22nd November 2023). |
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The Film
 "Cult Epics presents the Marleen Gorris Trilogy, three controversial and thought provoking films, from the director of the Oscar winning film "Antonia's Line." QUESTION OF SILENCE: Three Women, strangers with no premeditated thoughts kill a male shopkeeper in the middle of the day, a female psychiatrist is assigned to the case to find out why. BROKEN MIRRORS: Situated in an Amsterdam brothel, two whores rebel against their lot in life. Meanwhile one of their customers, a serial killer, kidnaps a housewife. THE LAST ISLAND: Five men and two woman, who survive an airplane crash, discover that they maybe the only survivors of a world disaster. The question arises: whether the human race should survive or does man kind destroy itself." Golden Calf (Best Film): Marleen Gorris (winner) - Nerderlands Film Festival, 1982 A Question of Silence: Psychiatrist Janine Van Den Bos (Cox Habbema) is called in to a most peculiar case. Three women housewife Christina (Edda Barends), secretary Andrea (Henriλtte Tol), and cafe owner An (Nelly Frijda) have all been arrested for the murder of a clothing boutique manager (The Fourth Man's Dolf de Vries). Christina is in a stupor but Andrea and An readily confess to the killing; however, before the act none of them were previously acquainted, and none of them will provide a motive for the killing. Taken together with the unusual brutality of a crime committed by women, Janine must determine whether these women are competent to stand trial, whether they are insane now or at least were at the time of the killing. Christina refuses to speak and Janine believes that she cannot, at least for the moment An wants to talk about everything but the crime, while Andrea ridicules Janine's line of questioning and the psychiatrist's belief that she is actually helping ("You don't really understand people at all; and certainly not women"). While her legal colleagues including her own lawyer husband Ruud (Eddy Brugman) readily accept that these women must be deranged, what Janine finds so maddening is that they appear to her to be the most ordinary women and not the "high-heeled army of furies" as described by the prosecutor (Erik Plooyer). Gradually too gradually for the wheels of justice Janine develops portraits of three women ignored and dismissed by the men in their life: Christina in prison is just another inconvenience for her workaholic husband who foists his two children off on his mother and sister, Christina's boss tells her to rearrange his calendar before she goes in for police questioning, and An behind all her bluster about how glad she is to be rid of her husband and grown child is a deeply lonely woman who finds ways to fill the silence. Janine, however, still cannot understand why the boutique owner, why that moment, and why those three women; and, more so, why there were apparently witnesses who neither tried to intervene or report the crime. Getting close to these three women also causes Janine to examine her own "so so" marriage, especially when her husband expressed concern about her professional reputation is actually about his own. The screenwriting and directorial debut of future Academy Award-winning filmmaker Marleen Gorris (Antonia's Line), A Question of Silence is as valid a feminist statement today as it was when it was released to much controversy (including fights breaking out between male and female festival audience members). The motive for the central murder remains ambiguous we never really know if Christina shoplifting a dress and being caught was the cause of the crime or an act of provocation that it soon becomes after which An and Andrea each separately divert the manager's attention by doing the same and one wonders whether their common experience of being dismissed and ignored by the men in their life means more to them or to Janine who as an upper class, intellectual, career woman seems to be the one experiencing an awakening of a sort to the reality of her devaluation by the men in her life. During a dinner party with friends, Ruud counters his colleagues assertion that Holland is superior for having no censorship by noting that the information may all be there but people are "systematically taught not to look" and "what cannot give immediate pleasure is done away with, considered unimportant..." which we see illustrated in the Janine's pointedly "Freudian" line of questioning in search of a motive for the crime in Andrea's relationships with her father and mother and her reaction to discovering that Andrea had sex just after the crime with a man who mistook her for a prostitute. Andrea's certainty that Janine's report will have no effect on how the court treats them is uncomfortably echoed in another dinner party conversation in which Ruud describes criminal trials as being for show, that everything is arranged beforehand, and the actual trials are "legal retribution" designed to "hurt people in the name of justice."  However radical it seems for a lawyer to be saying such things which Ruud defines as falling under "preserving the Status Quo" it is all just intellectual chatter and he shows no actual signs of wanting to change things. That particular discussion is as much a casual dismissal of Janine's work and any effect of anything she has to say as her early casual meeting with the prosecutor who to use an anachronistic term "mansplains" his conclusions about the case as if she will eventually arrive at the same conclusions as any "decent-minded person" should. Her testimony should shock the three defendants but it is met with more incredulity by the prosecutor, the judges, and her own husband; especially the latter who describes her contrary position as holding "very peculiar ideas" and advises for the sake of her (actually, his) career that she should perhaps "express yourself less vehemently." The film's Dutch title actually translates as "The Silence Around Christina M." and just as An tells Janine that reason for her silence is simply "Nobody is listening," one wonders when Janine joins in the chorus of laughter shared by the three defendants and the four undeclared witnesses a wealthy older white woman, a middle-aged black woman, and two young female punk rockers whether she will make some less-disastrous but definitive life change or be another silent witness. Pastorale 1943's Frederik de Groot has a minor role here as the women's befuddled attorney. Audience Award (Best Feature Film): Marleen Gorris (nominee) - Warsaw International Film Festival, 1987 Audience Award: Marleen Gorris (winner) - Nederlands Film Festival, 1985 Audience Award (Best Feature): Marleen Gorris (winner) - San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, 1985 Gold Hugo (Best Feature): Marleen Gorris (nominee) - Chicago International Film Festival, 1985 Prostitution is a finely-honed routine at Club Happy House, an Amsterdam brothel managed up front by Ellen (Katie Tippel's Coby Stunnenberg) and behind a desk by "pimp" Frank (Brotherhood of the Wolf's Johan Leysen). Discussion of erratic and unacceptable work performances is handled alongside maintenance issues and the price of regularly replacing towels and bed sheets. Dora (Good Times, Bad Times' Henriλtte Tol), however, can no longer stand it and is planning to get out; but that may be all talk since she seems to enjoy the effect that her eloquent observations of the seamy side of their work has on Diane (The Girl with Red Hair's Lineke Rijxman), an art school acquaintance eager to make a lot of money quickly. On the surface, Diane seems to adjust quickly to work, commiserating with the other women like an old hand; however, it is Dora who sees past her affected cynicism, awakening within herself a sense of commiseration she has only otherwise found with Andrι (Pastorale 1943's Wim Wama), a recluse who lives in a shack near where her houseboat is docked (who is either ignorant of her job or non-judgmental about it given the amount of scripture he quotes within their morning conversations). While the prostitutes have to worry about abuse from drunken clients and "nice guys" seeking freebies, a serial killer who abducts and starves women to death is stalking the city. His latest victim is housewife Bea (The Assault's Edda Barends) whose routine he has followed for several days before grabbing her outside her apartment building. As Club Happy House hosts a series of conventions, Diane starts to see the "madness" in their routines of which Dora spoke, but also the dangers inherent in their line of work and how little even the most sympathetic of clients any which of them could be the killer really think of them. Director Marleen Gorris' debut film A Question of Silence which also featured Tol and Barends as well as Eddy Brugman here in a role that may very well only differ on the surface was about an inexplicable murder committed by three women who had never met before and whose only resistance is deny their male prosecutors as well as the female criminal psychologist brought in to analyze them a motive satisfactory enough for them to be classified and dismissed again once justice has been dispensed. The women of Broken Mirrors live the existence that A Question of Silence' protagonist can only surmise and conjecture from her analyses. The world of Broken Mirrors is one where virtually all men are indifferent at best and rotten at worst the more respectable seeming, the worse it appears since the killer is shown (face still concealed) returning home between work and tormenting his victims to a warm dinner and pleasant conversation with his blissfully-oblivious wife (Romy's Salon's Beppie Melissen) and all women alike are treated like prostitutes ("Even housewives aren't safe," remarks one of the prostitutes upon hearing about the discovery of the killer's latest victim dumped by the river) from Dora by profession, Diane by her junkie boyfriend who either steals or wheedles money from her for a fix, to Bea who is expected to "perform" for the killer. Unlike Frank Wedekind's Lulu whose final client is Jack the Ripper himself, the possibility of winding up dead has nothing to do with a woman's "moral" choices here. The one victim we see is not a "woman of easy virtue" but someone going about their daily routine and fixated upon by the killer; indeed, Bea offers herself to the killer out of fear and the hope that he will let her go. The paths of resistance of the women in this film is to refuse to "perform" from Dora and Diane icily humiliating a customer hoping to get a free lay by showing up the next day to "apologize" for the drunken behavior of his friends, a starving and dying Bea realizing that the killer can only make impotent threats when she refuses to react to his manipulation, to all of the prostitutes varying degrees of disgust expressed at a regular client most satisfyingly by Tessa (Arline Renfurm), a Surinamese immigrant who otherwise seems to pretend not to understand racism directed at her by clients and co-workers alike when he expects to be rewarded with sex in the aftermath of helping seek medical attention for a prostitute who has been stabbed by an unstable member of a student party ("I'd have done the same for a dog," he says when Dora thanks him for helping them). When Diane fires a gun over the shoulder of this customer and then defiantly into each of the mirrors of Club Happy House, we get the feeling that those are all just warning shots as Diane and Dora depart to carve out new place in the world; nevertheless, the bloody aftermath is just more work for the brothel's cleaning lady (Elja Pelgrom).  In contrast to the grainy 16mm look of A Question of Silence, Broken Mirrors also produced by Matthijs van Heijningen who also backed Nouchka van Brakel's three major films The Debut, A Woman Like Eve, and The Cool Lakes of Death contrasts a cool blue and gray look for the killer's scenes that anticipates "Nordic Noir" with the brothel interiors designed, lit, and photographed (by Obsessions' Frans Bromet) like the setting of a Rainer Werner Fassbinder chamber play film while possibly taking a cue from Walerian Borowczyk's The Streetwalker in montages that give the sex acts the same importance as disposing of condoms, changing sheets, cleaning up messes, and emptying the trash. While there are a nude women on the screen, the "gaze" is decidedly female (or "heterosexually female") in offering up more instances of male nudity in the clients than female. A Question of Silence also offered up primarily male nudity of a character who seems to expect admiration from his distracted female partner while the female nudity in Gorris' Antonia's Line unfolds under the female gaze of a character who suddenly realizes that she is attracted to women; indeed, had the film been set half a century earlier, one wonders if Diane and Dora would become part of that film's "female utopia." The Last Island: A passenger plane goes down for unknown reasons, crashing on the beach of a tropical island. There are only seven survivors, and they view their situation in different ways: businessman Sean (Raiders of the Lost Ark's Paul Freeman) is sure the airline will have the coordinates of their crash by radar and should rescue them, military man Nick (Performance's Kenneth Colley) dispassionately sets about scavenging the plane an enlisting the others to remove the bodies and set them alight with the jet fuel rather than let them decay in the hot climate, botanist Pierre (Ismael's Ghosts' Marc Berman) looks for edible plants and indicators of where they are, young Frank (Swimming Upstream's Mark Hembrow) tries to catch fish, nineteen-year-old playboy Jack (Bates Motel's Ian Tracey) goes stir crazy and constantly annoys the others, while old Mrs. Godame (A Fish Called Wanda's Patricia Hayes) seems resigned to being a castaway. The exception is young, self-exiled Joanna (The Sleep of Death's Shelagh McLeod) who embraces the idyllic setting as "paradise." As the days go by without a soul in site and dead fish washing up on the shore, the group start to ponder whether their crash was a simple accident and if there is still a world beyond the island. When Pierre identifies the island chain they are on by an animal species exclusive to it and announces that the mainland is only a thousand kilometers distant, the group come together to build a boat only to drift for days with no wind before a colossal storm destroys it and washes them back on the shore. At this point, personalities begin to clash, with Nick alienating the group with his sanctimonious proclamations that God has destroyed the Earth and they must place themselves in his hands for salvation particularly targeting agnostic Joanna and gay Sean who has started kindling a relationship with Frank Jack's thoughts of drinking and sex leading to unwelcome advances on Joanna. After an attempted assault on Joanna that has tragic consequences, the men start discussing their (or rather, her) responsibility in repopulating the Earth The third feature film of future Academy Award-winning filmmaker Marleen Gorris, The Last Island follows up bleak urban depictions of the lives of marginalized women in A Question of Silence and Broken Mirrors with a colorful and exotic castaway film boasting a larger budget and lush production values; however, it is ultimately her bleakest yet nuanced view of humanity. To call it a feminist take on "Lord of the Flies" may accurate yet superficial as the film is not merely the same story from the perspective of a female character, but a study of the inextricable differences between man and woman. Whereas other sociological filmmakers might focus on class differences first and then gender, it matters not to Gorris but only to the men themselves that Sean is wealthy, Nick an army officer, and Pierre a scientific authority. Their discussion of having children is not if Joanna agrees but who will she pick rather than the question of why should they do it at all? The men's refusal to admit the unlikeliness that whatever offspring they reproduce will have any effect in repopulating the Earth at large in favor of it being a gesture of hope indirectly suggests that all of their other efforts in building a boat and increasingly elaborate living spaces the likes that Gilligan's Island never achieved were more labor-intensive diversions and distractions from reality. However much seems to hinge on Joanna's choice, she is ultimately a pawn in the battle for control between Sean who "invests" in his romantic partners and Nick who attempts to control the others with both a Bible and a gun. Just as earlier when Nick in recklessly "treating" a snakebite dismisses Mrs. Godame as an "old woman" when she insists that the snake is not venomous but then becomes flustered when Pierre confirms it, he attempts to use scripture and threats to drown out Joanna's resistance to submit to him as a woman but turns violent when proudly gay Sean throws contradictory scripture back in his face reveling in the other man's "moral" revulsion. As with Gorris' earlier films, "civility" is a mask but here it masks degrees of weakness in its male characters with the commonality of chauvinist attitudes towards women running the gamut of outright misogyny to sexism so casual and unthinking that it surprises when the most benign-seeming male character voices it. The men seem destined to destroy each other regardless of Joanna's efforts or Mrs. Godame's "God-like" counsel, with pacifist Frank feeling obligated to avenge Sean receiving an incredulous reaction from Joanna when he tells craven Pierre to "protect" her while Pierre only seems to go after Frank because his masculinity has taken a blow from another man rather than anything Joanna has said. The ending is ambiguous, but the two survivors seem better off even if no one ever finds them. The film was not a success likely because it does not offer the escapism viewers might have desired from a film about castaways but it may indeed point the direction towards Gorris' depiction of a not entirely exclusionary "female utopia" in Antonia's Line and her attempt to engage with the complicated feminism of Virginia Woolf with an American/British/Dutch adaptation of Mrs. Dalloway. 
Video
Following its film festival and film market screenings in 1982, A Question of Silence toured as part of the "Festival of Women's Film" and was picked up for U.S. theatrical release by Quartet Films in 1984 but did not secure a VHS release unlike some other titles from that arthouse distributor through RCA/Columbia or Nelson Entertainment. The original negative (Super 16?) and intermediate materials appear to be lost, so the Eye Filmmuseum had to resort to a 35mm projection print scanned in 2K and cleaned up to the best of their abilities. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen presentation features the American title card spliced in, but one assumes that this was done during the restoration since an actual vintage Quartet Films print would surely have included burnt-in English subtitles since the film was not dubbed into English and it seems highly unlikely that Eye Filmmuseum as impressive as their restoration efforts are digitally painted out the subtitles. The film's color scheme leans towards pastels apart from a few vibrant red and blues, but fading is evident, particularly along the edge of the frame. Infrequent damage remains but is only distracting during the final reel in which there is one large white splice as well as a handful of moments where footage has been slowed down for a few milliseconds to make up for missing frames.  Not released in the United States until 1987 by art house theatrical label First Run Features, Broken Mirrors did not make its way to physical media when that company moved to VHS and then DVD, and the most widely-available edition was a German DVD that was not English-friendly. Whereas Cult Epics' Blu-ray of A Question of Silence was derived from an Eye Filmmusem restoration that utilized worn theatrical print materials, their restoration of Broken Mirrors comes from a gorgeous new transfer from the original 35mm camera negative and the results are gorgeously-faithful to the slicker look of the film. Reds are prevalent and saturated from the Club Happy House dιcor to the daytime scenes of the killer stalking his victim which are given a subtle sepia grade in which red is the only color that pops in the frame. Fine detail does suffer under some of the more severe lighting gels and brothel scenes heavy in cigarette smoke and diffusion but textures reveal themselves in facial close-ups, hair, and wardrobe (the clothing of the unseen killer reveals itself to be a telling clue later in the film). Damage is almost non-existent while natural grain is retained.  Although shot in English with an international cast, The Last Island was not picked up for theatrical or video release in the United States or the United Kingdom. Presumably due to the bankruptcy of First Floor Features more on that in the commentary the original negative was unavailable so the rights owner had to resort to what is described as the only existing 35mm print of the film for Cult Epics' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen Blu-ray (presumably this is the only existing 35mm element for international use as a Dutch print would have had burnt-in Dutch subtitles). The film was likely lensed with 1.85:1 matting in mind as the 1.78:1 framing does not impede the compositions, although the film's trailer and clips in the television interview are framed at 1.66:1. A disclaimer at the start notes the presence of damage in the form of scratches, and they are plentiful at the reel changes and the generational loss of the print does mean that not as much fine detail can be resolved in sequences where colored Wratten filters are employed in front of the lens or the timing is skewed towards warm oranges or chilly blues, and some of the night exteriors are murkier than intended, so it is just as well that no attempts to "fix" the image digitally have been employed. 
Audio
A Question of Silence features virtually identical Dutch mono tracks in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and uncompressed LPCM 2.0 which evince some hiss but the dialogue is always intelligible and a few pointed sound effects make themselves known like the sound of a coat hanger handle aggressively sliding across a rail or the various wounds inflicted on the manager just off-camera while it is difficult to determine if aggressive electronic scoring is distorted deliberately or just clipped. Optional English subtitles are free of errors and differ slightly from those on Quartet prints.  As with other recent Cult Epics Blu-rays, Broken Mirrors offers the same mono track is offered in both lossless DTS-HD Master Audio and uncompressed LPCM 2.0, and both offer up clear sync-sound dialogue, music, and effects without any distracting damage or overzealous digital clean-up. The sinister synths of composer Lodewijk de Boer occasionally give way to popular music, although usually at a volume low enough that it does not give "pleasure" to the viewer. Optional English subtitles are free of any glaring errors.  The Last Island's Dolby Stereo soundtrack fares better in both uncompressed LPCM 2.0 and lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 16-bit audio. There are moments where scratches on the element do result in hiss on the soundtrack (the overall underlying hiss only becomes loudly noticeable during the end credits as the music fades out). Most of the dialogue is production audio although the location work did require some post-synching and that is obvious in the mix. There are some directional sound effects which seem rather bluntly mixed while atmosphere seems sparse because it is so omnipresent, and the score has the most spread in the mix. Optional English SDH subtitles are also included. 
Extras
A Question of Silence is accompanied by a new audio commentary by film scholar Patrica Pisters who notes that the film's four principal women embody different classes of Dutch society, noting such touches as the "gendered drinks" during the Van Den Bos' dinner parties, the authentic prison setting as the country's attempt at a "more humaine" system aimed at reforming and reintegrating offenders after budget cuts, it was labeled a "failed experiment" and has since been gentrified into a housing block Gorris having no prior film or television experience but convincing producer Matthijs van Heijningen to greenlight her script and being advised to direct it herself by potential director Chantal Akerman (Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels). Pisters provides an overview of Gorris' subsequent filmography noting that A Question of Silence forms a loose trilogy with her two follow-up films Broken Mirrors and The Last Island and contrasting it with the "epic matriarchal fairy tale" Antonia's Line while also noting that although Gorris was the first female Academy Award-winning director, she is not often mentioned in the company of Jane Campion (The Piano), Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), or Chloι Zhao (Nomadland). Next up is an archival 1982 "Cinevisie" television interview with director Marleen Gorris (11:14) in which Gorris discusses the film's reception including the fights that broke out between male and female audience members with the panel moderators throwing up their hands in defeat and ruminating on the kinds of men and women likely to condemn the female characters or support them. There is also a 1983 "Cinevisie" television interview with actress Cox Habbema (16:22) who had just appeared that year in the miniseries Armoede but discussion turns back to the Gorris film, its reception, and a discussion of the difference between acting in Holland and her adopted home in Germany. It seems at first opportunistic of the interviewer to turn the discussion over to other recent releases Michelangelo Antonioni's Identification of a Woman and Erwin Keusch's So weit das Auge reicht but it appears that she too has seen these films for the purposes of discussing them within the program. The disc also includes a brief 1982 Polygoon Journal Newsreel Extract (0:46) of the film's premiere, a promotional gallery, the film's theatrical trailer (3:02), and trailers for six other Dutch titles from Cult Epics.  Broken Mirrors' starts with an audio commentary by film scholar Peter Verstraten who discusses the difficulty of seeing the film, references a podcast on the restoration, and contrasts the film's depiction of prostitution with contemporaries like Paul Verhoeven's comedic Business is Business and Ken Russell's wickedly melodramatic Crimes of Passion, the significance of the only positive male character in the film amidst mostly "interchangeable" men, stylistic comparisons to Antonioni and Bresson in Gorris' refusal to endorse the male gaze with conventional cinema language, and how Gorris' sympathy for social outcasts carries over to Antonia's Line (which he reveals is narrated by this film's Rijxman).  The disc also includes an interview with U.S. sex worker Margo St. James (8:17) from 1984 in which she discusses her attempts to unionize prostitutes in the United States and solidarity with migrant and gay populations noting that the profession was once run by women and attempts in America and Europe to legally regulate it were a means of men asserting control and expresses admiration for Gorris' film without endorsing her view of prostitutes and clients. The disc also include a promotional gallery and Cult Epics trailers.  The Last Island features an audio commentary by film historian Peter Verstraeten whose discussion of the film is as much a discussion of the rise and fall of First Floor Features co-founded by director Dick Maas and producer Laurens Geels after Maas' dissatisfaction over the sharing of profits with The Lift producer Matthijs van Heijningen (who produced Gorris' first two films). The company had massive hit with Maas' still massively popular comedy Flodder and Alex van Warmerdam's Abel, but The Last Island along with Otakar Votocek's Wings of Fame were attempts to break into the international market with English-language productions that both ended up flopping domestically and abroad with Flodder sequels, a TV spin-off, and the prestige Dutch drama Character keeping the company afloat before Maas' further attempts with the English-language Silent Witness and the New York-lensed The Lift remake Down which not only was incredibly goofy on it own but had the misfortune of being a film about a deadly highrise released just a month and a half before 9/11. His discussion then shifts towards the influences of castaway stories as literary and cinematic antecedents, noting the colonial aspect of "Robinson Crusoe" which is usually overlooked in favor of the adventure, as well as parallels of the film's character relationships with those of Hell in the Pacific. His discussion of Gorris in the context of female filmmakers of the period, and in contrast to "counter cinema" questioning narrative and identification as she saw the necessity of audience engagement interweaving story and message. The disc also includes an introduction by producer Dick Maas (0:28) as an option to play before the feature as well as a 1990 television interview with columnist Annemarie Grewel (11:37) who discusses the film's feminist themes with the host in light of some inflammatory reviews of the film. The behind the scenes (16:51) is actually a series of montages set to popular eighties music depicting the transportation of the real airplane wreck from Trinidad to Tobago the wreck was used by the island's fire department in exercises and proved too expensive to move back so the production compensated the fire department by paying for training of two members in London the building of sets, and some shots of the cast and crew milling about that are not really informative but are a testament to how believable the film is in keeping the viewer focused on the castaway characters and not even conceiving of the relatively crew just outside the frame.  The disc closes with a promotional gallery, the Dutch theatrical trailer (3:06), and a quintet of Cult Epic trailers.
Packaging
When ordered directly from Cult Epics, the set includes picture postcards for each film as well as a twenty-page illustrated booklet with an essay by Anneke Smelik).
Overall
Before her award-winning "epic matriarchal fairy tale" Antonia's Line, Marleen Gorris explored the dark depths of female exploitation with the three films that comprise the Marleen Gorris Trilogy.
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