“People always fear that sports movies can’t be arthouse,” says Leonardo van Dijl, a 31-year-old Belgian director whose debut feature, Julie Keeps Quiet, is a sports movie that’s defiantly arthouse. “And then the joke is that Luca Guadagnino did Challengers. Thank you, Luca and Zendaya, for creating a demand for tennis movies.”
While Challengers is a loud, techno-pounding, sexually charged romcom, Julie Keeps Quiet is an introspective, Dutch-language drama about an abusive relationship between a tennis coach and his female students. “I’m probably the biggest fan of Luca in the world,” says van Dijl. “In the casting process, I was like, ‘I’m doing the Belgian We Are Who We Are.’” He only learned during post-production about Challengers. “I feel guilty that people are saying, ‘Finally, a movie with real tennis players. Julie knows how to serve, and Zendaya does not.’ They’re great companions.” It’s also in the title: one’s noisy, the other is deathly hushed? “Challengers is like brat, and Julie is demure and mindful. In the end, we love both.”
I’m speaking to van Dijl in Hoxton during the London Film Festival at the tail end of brat summer, hence the Charli XCX reference. The Julie in question is a 15-year-old sports prodigy played by Tessa Van den Broeck. At an elite tennis school in Belgium, practice is sourly halted with the news that Aline, a former pupil, has taken her life, and a tennis coach, Jeremy, has been suspended for reasons not yet revealed. While Julie remains in continuous contact with Jeremy over the phone, he doesn’t appear on the screen. What’s also apparent is the glares from other tennis players who are waiting for Julie to speak up – but about what, exactly?
Julie Keeps Quiet, then, is an enigmatic puzzle full of silences created by a young girl who would rather concentrate on her tennis than address the authorities about Jeremy. Moreover, the inaction might even be encouraged by Julie’s school itself. “It’s almost a ghost story,” says van Dijll. “Jeremy hounds her but he’s physically not present. The other rule was that we wouldn’t reveal the [reason for] Julie’s silence.” With a laugh, he adds, “If you think about it, horror movies nowadays aren’t scary anymore. We can brand this as a horror movie.”
Julie Keeps Quiet is certainly not a horror movie, but it’s more tense and haunting than anything from Blumhouse. Van den Broeck is mesmerising in how little she gives away, while the training is hypnotic: an opening sequence involves Julie miming her tennis movements, just like in Blow-Up. However, Van Dijil insists he hasn’t seen Blow-Up – he grew up on Pasolini and Visconti, not Antonioni – and was drawing on a fashion video he made for Dries van Noten in which a model plays air drums. “It was this guy reconnecting with his inner child. If it’s the end of Blow-Up, it makes sense that it’s a good beginning [for Julie]. Two weeks ago, Zendaya and Federer did a game of air tennis. I was like, ‘Why did you not invite Julie?’”
While van Dijll is in a jokey mood – he explains his screenwriting process as an act of finding balance, due to Libra being his star sign – the conversation inevitably leads to more serious matter. At the heart of Julie Keeps Quiet is an uncomfortable, perhaps controversial point about Julie’s right to silence. Typically the pressure is on victims to speak up about what they know, and their experiences. What if that victim is a 15-year-old girl? “I wanted to pose a question, almost like Shakespeare: to speak, or not to speak? There’s no right choice for Julie. In either choice, she will end up, sadly, suffering.”
“Challengers is like brat, and Julie is demure and mindful. In the end, we love both”
In constructing the screenplay, van Dijl and his co-writer, Ruth Becquart, who plays Julie’s mother, were inspired by the title character of Antigone, the Ancient Greek play by Sophocles. “Antigone was a 15-year-old girl advocating for human rights,” says van Dijl. “So we have a 15-year-old tennis player who decides to keep quiet. By doing that, she tells the world, ‘Please listen to me.’” He continues, “Ultimately, it’s up to us as a society to create a safer world for Julie. Now, we are still pressuring the victim to speak up to prevent an injustice from repeating itself. That’s not fair.”
After suggesting that victims should be encouraged to speak to a therapist before a lawyer, van Dijl has to pause for a moment. It’s a difficult subject. “People often ask me, ‘Why is Julie keeping quiet?’ Every person she’s sitting with is a new reason to keep quiet. There are a million reasons to keep quiet. But the one that stands out is that she wants to keep control over her narrative. That’s why victims often keep quiet: at least that silence is theirs. If you’ve lost control – that last bit you have, you don’t want to give it away.”
Before his debut feature, van Dijl made a number of sports-related shorts, the most acclaimed being Stephanie, a 15-minute film about an 11-year-old female gymnast. He explains that sports, to him, are a metaphor for society, and feed into his deep interest in politics. “But instead of going into the world of politics, it becomes an accessible story about all of us.”
The director also realised he was a specialist in making sports cinematic. By shooting Julie Keeps Quiet on 35mm, the tennis differs from the digital sheen of typical television coverage, while the camera remains at a respectful distance, keeping its eye on Julie without being voyeuristic. “We have a scene where Julie looks into the lens. It’s very subtle. It’s like she’s saying to the audience, ‘Can you stop watching me for three seconds? I didn’t choose to be in this movie.” For the final shot, he switched to 65mm. “We needed to make it expensive. We needed to make sacrifices to acknowledge that that last bit of control she has is precious.”
After Julie Keeps Quiet premiered at Cannes, Naomi Osaka joined as an executive producer, and van Dijl hopes, with her assistance, the film can influence how athletes are coached. “I have a responsibility to girls like Julie who are living like this,” he says. “But you also have girls like Julie at 25, at 35, at 45, and you have boys at 25, at 35, at 45. This character is also about myself. I’m gay. In that way, by writing about how the world is treating a 15-year-old girl, I started to understand in that way how sometimes I am being handled.
“I’m here to advocate for safe child practices. But doing research into that field, I started to understand about healthy coaching and safe sports. I also understood safe directing, and what it’s like to work with actors.” So the film might have an impact on young people in all professions, not just sports? “I always say: it’s not young people who should see the movie, but it’s adults, and they should talk about how we can create a safer space for children. If we can find out how to do that for children, maybe we can also figure out how to do it for adults.”
Julie Keeps Quiet is out in UK cinemas on April 25. Curzon are hosting a Q&A screening with Leonardo van Dijl at Curzon Soho on April 15. More info can be found here
