Silent Hasn’t Much to Say

2 stars

There’s good news and bad news about director Ildikó Enyedi’s new film, Silent Friend. The good news is that for the price of a ticket, you get to watch not one, not two, but three very unique movies about three generations of scientists trying to find a way to talk to plants. The bad news is that while each has some interesting moments, none of them really works. And one of them is downright annoying.

The more interesting of the segments, set in 2020, tells the story of Tony, a neurologist from Hong Kong, played by Tony Leung Chiu-wai (In The Mood for Love), who uses cutting-edge technology in the guise of a silly looking rubber shower cap to try to measure the emotional life he thinks he shares with a giant gingko tree on the campus of the German university where he is doing his research. Because it’s set in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tony works in relative isolation, partnering only via Zoom with a sassy French scientist named Alice (Léa Seydoux) who suggests things like tripping on hallucinogenic plants to enhance his experience. Even though they aren’t in the same room, there’s a palpable chemistry between the pair that pulls you into the story to the point where you may not understand what they’re talking about, but you’ll listen just for the hang.

There’s another section taking place in 1908 (shot in black and white, so we know it’s historic) that tells about a young botanist named Grete (Luna Wedler) trying to break through the misogynist glass ceiling of early 20th-century academia. When her participation in a pagan festival in the woods is reported to her landlady, she is kicked out of her home and the university. Luckily, she lands a job in the fledgling photography industry and channels her passion for plants (and naughty-for-the-times self-portraits) into art. There’s a passion to this part of the film that’s lacking in the more cerebral 2020 era; if you don’t get angry at what the old dicks at the university put Grete through in her examinations, then you need a serious reevaluation of your psyche. Wedler is fantastic.

Finally, there’s the peace, love, pot, and plants generation of students, circa 1972. While most of them are more interested in their anti-war strike than anything to do with plants, one of them has high hopes of finding a way to communicate with the geranium she keeps on her windowsill. Her hands-off approach to studying the plant isn’t getting any results, but when she goes camping with her hippie friends, the college square has a breakthrough and manages to train the plant to open the gate for him when he gets home. The idea of scientific research resulting in subjugation is interesting, but it is never explored in any meaningful way. Enyedi seems much more interested in exploring the sexual freedoms of the time than in exploring potential plant repartee. 

And although there are three films in Silent Friend, viewers should know they aren’t presented in any linear or historical order. They’re all jumbled together in a way that probably makes sense to Enyedi, but will be lost on most viewers, many of whom will admit to themselves early on that the effort just isn’t worth it.