The Bay of Silence Review

Starring: Claes Bang, Olga Kurylenko, Brian Cox, Caroline Goodall 

Trauma. What impact does it have on one’s life? It’s more powerful than we imagine and more familiar than most would admit.

How well do you know someone? How many secrets does one keep? 

These are such questions that surface in The Bay of Silence. 

There is an initial scene with two teens running and hiding a case, between coastal rocks, that eventually surfaces later in the film. 

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. 

The Bay of silence centers around Rosalind (Kurylenko), an artist with two girls who meets and marries Will (Bang). Their life seems a happy one, with the mother of twin girls, pregnant months later. It quickly changes when she falls and is taken to the hospital. There she gives birth early to Amedeo, their son. However, it is both striking to Will and the audience that she asks in dismay, why her “next” child was taken. It leaves the audience to begin to suspect Will in some form of deceit. 

Rosalind sleepwalks and scrapes at the walls, peeling at it, until Will stops her. Her behavior adds more concern when she appears at a cemetery looking at unnamed graves of children, with her son in tow. 

Will seeks the help of Milton (Cox), Rosalind’s father and whose keen investment in Rosalind’s artistic ability leads one to suspect there is more to him than meets the eye. 

The acting abilities of the film’s actors- from Rosalind’s haunting personality differences to Will’s own trauma in losing his son and even Milton’s reveal- truly drives the movie. 

When Rosalind disappears with the  children, leaving a blaring, disturbing message for Will, yet again the focus is on his involvement, if any, in her child. 

Will travels to the gloomy Normandy, where he finds the girls alone by the coast, and Rosalind in a trance of sorts, as if reliving some trauma from her past. Her performance is mesmerizing and the audience can’t help but feel the need to scramble pieces to save her. 

The discovery of his child lifeless in the stroller that the twins play with, is one of the more shocking and heartbreaking scenes of the movie, executed well by Bang. The emotional burial in a shallow grave of his child adds to the sadness of the film. 

Upon his return, Will learns from Rosalind’s mother that she had been admitted before as a young girl in a sanatorium. 

When Milton gives papers to Will to fake an accident, following the baby’s death, the audience suspects the babysitter, who is now missing. Upon further investigation, it is revealed that the child was sick and died, not of anyone’s accord. 

This shifts the focus on Rosalind’s past, as a victim of sexual abuse. Here Milton, revealed as the protagonist in the film, drugs and keeps Rosalind at his house as Will arrives. 

While the story throws around the question of “who did what”, it shows that trauma can resurface and trigger many changes in a person’s life. 

While many critics have spoken about the pace and the structure of the film, The Bay of silence is a film to see for yourself. Caroline Goodall is credited with writing and producing the film. 

Those who appreciate a mellowed approach to film, there it is, by Paula van der Oest. It delves into a topic that is thrown around with much aggression in films, with an added touch of humanity. See The bay of silence, for yourself.